“As long as it takes” turned out to be seven weeks, three days, and eleven hours. The travel time bothered me until Richard explained it would only be seconds in the real world. Either that or we’d starve to death and our problems would be over anyway.
In the end, there was plenty of food and water to be found within the Dreamlands if you knew where to look. We traded with a tribe of nomadic Horned Men, fought several winged horrors from Leng, enjoyed the hospitality of several cloven-hoofed succubi, and paid our respects to the many warriors whose dreams were buried here.
By the end of our journey, we were exhausted and worn to the quick but perhaps a little bit wiser. Standing less than a yard from the Elder Things’ tower, we both stared upward as if to try and catch a glimpse of the tower’s top. A futile gesture since the tower appeared to be literally infinite in its height.
Far away, the tower had looked like it was a gargantuan but comprehensible structure that was only a few miles away. Now that we had reached it, we saw the tower’s true nature was unfathomably greater. The building’s mass defied description and we were less than ants compared to its Olympian presence. Even the Great Old Ones would have felt terribly small at the foot of the enormous building. The staggering fact was, there were doors and windows built into the tower for beings who would not even see us for their height. I could not imagine the mass of the beings inhabiting this tower, what sort of life they lead, or how they would react to us.
If they noticed us at all.
“You know …” Richard looked down and started to roll a cigarette, having stolen some Ulthar tobacco from the Horned Men we’d met. “That is one big fucking tower.”
“Yeah,” I said, not looking away. “It really is.”
“Getting through the front door is going to be tough,” Richard said. “And by tough I mean impossible.”
We were right in front of the tower’s single visible door; unfortunately, there was seemingly no way to open it. It would take unimaginable force to budge it even a few degrees. Had a small crack existed under the door, we could have easily fit underneath it, but no such space was present. It was hundreds of feet high and probably dozens of feet thick. I saw no way to break it open, especially not with the minimal equipment in our possession.
“This is going to be difficult,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Were the Elder Things this big?”
“I don’t think so,” Richard said. “I’ve never actually met one, mind you, but they used to live in Antarctica. I’m pretty sure this place would be visible from Earth on Jupiter.”
“You have a point. The fact something like this can exist baffles me,” I shook my head. “So how are we going to get in?”
Richard shrugged his shoulders. “Not my problem.”
“Thank you,” I said, sarcastically. “I’m glad I can count on you.”
“Hey, I’m just being honest.” The ghoul threw his hands up in the air. “I have no idea. You’re the brains here, Soldier Boy. I’m just the guide.”
“Maybe we should just knock?” I suggested, not really having any answers for tackling a problem of this magnitude.
“Somehow, I don’t think that would work.” Richard pointed between us. “Dress code and all.”
Richard’s Hawaiian shirt had mostly rotted off him, leaving him looking more like a regular ghoul—naked and animalistic. The rain and the yellowish spores we’d encountered had mostly eaten it away. My own clothes were now covered in mud, thread-worn, and looking like they’d been through hell and back.
“Fine,” I said, trying to think of other options. Then I remembered an old saying my father had taught me: The only thing infinite that can be held in a man’s hands is a thought. It was a Zen koan he’d picked up from a Wasteland mystic named Carter. Now, I could see the wisdom in it, especially here. “Richard, close your eyes.”
“Why?” Richard suddenly tensed. “What are you planning?’
“Just do it.” I tried to focus on the fact this was my dream. Even if it somehow linked up with a greater “Uber-Dream” all beings shared, it was still formed by my thoughts and ideas. That meant I had the power here.
“Okay.” Richard finally obeyed my command, shutting his furry eyelids.
Doing the same, I imagined Richard and I were tall enough to walk into the tower through the front door. I stepped forward, putting my hands out, believing I had enough force to move mountains. Everything would depend on my believing the impossible, something I tried to do at least six times a day.
I was rewarded by the feel of the stone giving way, slowly at first but gradually more deliberately. The tower didn’t become any smaller but its proportions shifted, as if the universe was re-orientating itself to my vision. Did the Great Old Ones see the world this way? If so, did that make the physical universe their dream? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. My musings ended when I felt the stone fall forward as if pushed down. It struck the ground with a titanic but not ear-splitting thud.
“Huh. It worked,” I said, opening my eyes. We were now standing in a tower built for beings only slightly larger than ourselves. If we had gone down the rabbit hole, we’d now just drunk from the bottle labeled DRINK ME.
“John, what you just did is impossible. The Dreamlands don’t work this way.” Richard looked almost offended at what I’d done. “If they did, I would have advised you to dream us up a damn plane.”
“I had considered that,” I admitted. “On my first day no less.”
“You might have mentioned that!” Richard’s voice was shrill and I actually heard growling in the back of his inhuman throat.
“I just figured you’d have told me if such a thing were possible. Besides, I was enjoying the journey,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I got a lot of thinking done while I was out. I think I solved a number of philosophical riddles I’d been long pondering. Like, ‘Why do good things happen to bad people?’ and ‘Where do my socks go when I put them in the dryer?’”
“Next time, save your weird-ass walkabout for when I’m not potentially starving to death in the physical world.” Richard looked about ready to tackle me. I admit, it felt good to pay him back for what he’d done during the ghast attack.
The interior of the tower was surprisingly homey, albeit not in a manner most human beings would find comfortable. The hallway was circular and uneven, as opposed to square, often looking like a size-shifting worm had dug its passages. There were torches along the walls, but each was tipped with a coral-like crystal instead of fire. What was recognizably furniture was present as well, but for bodies unrelated to any hominid ancestor.
“I’m not sure if I should be unnerved or reassured at the similarities,” I said, taking a moment to soak in the alien architecture.
“The Elder Things are carbon-based beings.” Richard warily began walking in. “That’s rarer than you think. I suppose in the grand scheme of things that makes them closer to our race than say, the Great Old Ones’ species or species-es. What’s the plural form of species?”
“Species. You said our race?” I asked, enjoying his crisis of language.
“You’ve adopted one of our kids; you’re an honorary ghoul now. Just don’t expect to win any beauty pageants.” Richard slapped me on the back.
His words confirmed something I’d expected for a long time. Little Jackie was a ghoul-human hybrid and doomed to undergo the same transformation Richard had undergone. “Richard, was … it painful?”
“The Change?” Richard’s voice grew very cold, almost sad.
“Yes.”
“Excruciating.” Richard’s voice, still human despite his canine mouth, changed only a little as he said that one word. That tiny change in his voice, however, spoke volumes.
“I’m sorry.”
The two of us soon found ourselves at a strange, twisting staircase, one which rose high up toward a star-shaped doorway. Beyond it, strange noises echoed and weird lights flickered on and off. We both paused at the base of it, not ready to make the trek up, even if our quarry was close at hand.
Richard took a moment to think before he started speaking again, “Listen, if you want some advice about Jackie, the best thing—”
And then he was dead.
The nature of combat is a violent, swift, unromantic thing. That was the first thing I’d learned as a soldier. One moment, you were standing next to someone you thought of as a friend and brother-in-arms, the next you were cradling their dead body. In Richard’s case, he was struck by a bolt of strange alien energy which passed through the front of his chest and out the other side like a gunshot. A massive, gaping hole was created by the blast, killing him instantly.
I had only a split moment to react before a second bolt was discharged in my direction. Reflexes are faster than conscious thought, however. I was able to maneuver out of the way of where my assailant was aiming. Long enough to privately vow I would kill whoever had taken my best friend from me.
Staring up at the top of the stairs, I saw the Elder Thing. It was not as sanity-blasting as some of the creatures I’d seen in the Wasteland. Yet, the creature was still alien and terrifying. It was a creature from another world, whose race had colonized the Earth when it was nothing more than boiling seawater. The Elder Thing stood eight feet tall with a barrel-like chest and starfish-esque appendages where its head and feet should have been.
It had other inhuman qualities which unsettled me just looking at them, such as stalks for eating and seeing in ways humans could not appreciate, but none of these interested me. The only things that did were the crystalline rod it held in one of its tentacles—the weapon which had killed my friend—and the fact it was Richard’s murderer.
“Murderer!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, forgetting all thought of how the creature might help me.
Lifting my heavy assault rifle, I poured the dream-based ammunition into the creature’s weapon. The monster didn’t seem to understand what I was doing, only moving its weapon to fire again as the tendril holding it was promptly shredded.
The Elder Thing let forth an inhuman shriek as blue and greenish fluids poured out of its wounds. The crystal rod shattered seconds later, disarming it. In that moment, a red mist came over my eyes, drowning out all reason. I continued firing into the monster’s chest, wounding it further until the magazine was empty.
The Elder Thing was badly injured from my assault, bleeding from multiple holes spread across its chest while letting forth wails of pain which no terrestrial animal could duplicate. Grabbing my rifle by the barrel, I charged up the stairs and slammed my body squarely into the Elder Thing’s chest. The creature possessed strength no human could match but the intensity of my anger drowned out all difference in our sizes.
The Elder Thing was thrown to the ground, its frame sliding across the polished surface of the tower’s floors. I could tell by the shrieking and wailing it made that it was stunned by the ferocity of my attack.
Good.
“Butcher! Beast! Creature!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, bringing the end of my rifle around and smashing it against the tendrils sticking out of the top of its octagonal body. The tissue there was soft, and pieces broke off with the first blow.
The thing had no eyes or face to read emotions from, but I could sense its fear as I brought down the butt of my weapon into its head tentacles again and again. Its wounds sprayed me with the Elder Thing’s neon-colored internal fluids, dying my attire a shade of luminescent orange. The same unstoppable rage I’d experienced fighting Peter once more consumed me, driving me to beat the Elder Thing to death. I once more heard the music of Azathoth’s court.
This time, I embraced it.
“You have no idea what you’ve destroyed!” I shouted, hearing the sound of my weapon bash against its head. “One of the last true humans!”
It was an insane comment and in all likelihood, the Elder Thing had no idea what I was saying; still, it made me feel better.
By the end of my penultimate attack, its upper appendages were a brutalized mass of fluids and gore as I saw its eye-like sensory stalks look at me. Lifting my weapon up a final time, I prepared to crush the monster’s head in and end its life. The music in my head reached a crescendo, signaling it was time to send the beast to whatever hell awaited it.
That was when I heard a voice in my head, a telepathic plea that sounded almost human despite its peculiar stereo-like quality. Its words were the only things that might stay my hand from finishing it off. “Please, don’t harm the children!”
What?
The otherworldly music in my head grew louder, as if compelling me to crush the Elder Thing’s upper torso despite the Elder Thing’s dying plea. Forcing myself to resist the urge, I managed to drive out the accursed music. It took every ounce of my willpower; I dearly wanted to kill the beast and avenge Richard’s death, but I did it. I would not become a man who orphaned children if I could help it.
Stopping the descent of my weapon just a few feet above its head, I asked, “What did you say?”
The Elder Thing moved up one of its protruding stalks, possibly what passed for its eyes. What it said next with its telepathic speech sounded almost surprised. “You can understand me? Impossible. Humans do not have the mental capacity to understand the language of the Elder Race.”
I lifted my weapon again, holding it over the tentacles which existed in place of its face. “Think again.”
God, I wanted to kill it. Taking several deep breaths, I managed to calm myself, albeit barely. If the creature showed any sign of treachery, I vowed to smash it to a gory pulp of alien goo—children or not.
One of its outgrowths raised in an almost pleading gesture. “I apologize. I have not seen any of your species since the dying days of my people’s civilization, when the southern continent dwellers worshiped the snake god Yig-Seth and the northerner continent dwellers prayed at the altar of Crom Cruach.”
I aimed my makeshift club at its tentacles, uncaring about the creature’s reminisces. “You said you had children?”
It was ridiculous to pull back now. Nothing this thing said could change the fact it had murdered Richard, one of the few people in my life I called friend. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to kill the beast if it was just trying to protect its offspring. Enough sympathy existed within me to understand that was an urge that united all races.
At least, I hope it did.
“As your race defines them, yes. You are not here to destroy my clan’s egg clutch?” the Elder Thing said, its telepathic voice causing me as much of a headache as my recent memory flashes.
“No.”
“I am sorry. I presumed you were with the Necromancer.” The Elder Thing had no emotions which could be read on its nonexistent face, yet I guessed it was probably feeling guilty. Probably. Its telepathic “voice” lacked the inflections that would have told me for sure. Nevertheless, I listened as it continued to speak, “I bear your species no harm. Yet, one member of it has transcended the limitations you possess. He has destroyed several other Dreamlands clans, seizing their technology and homesteads. I assumed you were his agent.”
“No, his enemy.” I put my weapon down, though still kept my grip tightly around its handle. “I know we invaded your home but we came in peace. We only wanted to ask for your help.”
I doubted Elder Things possessed the capacity to appreciate irony or experience bitterness at the vagaries of fate. Yet, if the aliens had an equivalent, I suspected it would be feeling them. “I will assist you in any way possible, if only for the fact you are a highly dangerous organism and I wish you out of my domain.”
It was almost enough to make me laugh. This whole thing was absurd—tragically, horrifically absurd. “Believe me, I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.”
“I somehow doubt that.” The being continued to twitch on the ground, still badly wounded from my attack. Unlike other entities I’d encountered, apparently Elder Things didn’t regenerate. “Since you can communicate, I would like to know how you broke the proportion-warping effect we worked around our hatchery. It should have made the tower impossibly formidable to look upon.”
I bit my lip. It had all been an illusion. Richard would have found that funny. “Luck, I guess.”
“That is an insufficient answer,” the creature responded. Its cold and clinical manner made me want to kill it, any earlier sympathy largely evaporated.
“I saw through it.” My grip tightened around the barrel of my gun. I desperately wanted to believe Richard was still alive, that he’d just woken up when his astral-self had been killed, but something told me that wasn’t the case. He was dead and it was my fault, all because of my insane need to find out more about my last mission.
Staring at the creature, I hoped against hope there was some arcane magical solution for what had just occurred. “Can you raise my friend back from the dead?”
The Elder Thing twitched a second before responding. “Resuscitation of non-Elder Race life-forms does not fall within my area of expertise. No.”
No, of course not, that would have been too easy.
I pulled out a spare ammunition magazine, one I imagined was in my pocket before it appeared. I then placed it in my weapon’s chamber. It was an experiment to see if I could still bend reality, the size of the tower being an illusion aside.
So far, so good.
Holding the weapon up to its head, I put my finger on the trigger and contemplated just sending the Elder Thing to whatever afterlife awaited plant-sea creature hybrid aliens. I then asked, “Can you remove a spell?”
The creature was clearly distressed and I wondered if it was scared. Could Elder Things even feel fear? If they could, I was glad. I would hate this thing forever for killing Richard. Still, I needed it to finish my mission. That was the only way I could sort through my grief right now.
Noticing it was hesitating, I put the gun straight to where I guessed its central nervous system laid. “Answer me!”
“I do not know what a spell is,” the Elder Thing finally admitted. “Your mental projections regarding them just come off as nonsensical, irrational imagery.”
“It’s a connection, between me and something called Nyarlathotep.” I kept the gun aimed at it, fully intending to kill it if it couldn’t help. “It is a god, if you know what that is.”
Would it be murder? Probably, but murder was something you became used to in the Wasteland. I’d never executed someone without good cause before, but the death of my friend was pretty damn good cause in my mind, mistake on the Elder Thing’s part or not.
“Ah. I am familiar with the Dreamlands’ personifications of the universe’s laws.” The Elder Thing moved its tendril over my chest. “Strange, this seems to weave in and out of your body.”
“Just break it.”
“You are not entirely divorced from this power. If I remove it, it will not change the fact you are not entirely dissimilar to my race, at least mentally,” the Elder Thing said.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“I am unsurprised. Despite your ignorance, you may be quite useful to my people, especially if this Nyarlathotep is the same being we call K’Tharl’tak.” The Elder Thing seemed almost … cocky. “You are evolved on a sturdier level than the humans I recall. You are different from them on a fundamental level.”
“I’m human, just human.” I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.
“Yes and no, which is why you are fascinating to me.” The Elder Thing forced its presence against my mind. A stinging pain passed over me, one which threatened to kill me. For a moment, I thought that was the creature’s intention but its presence was violently thrown out of my mind as if my brain was defending itself.
“It is done.” The creature sounded almost impressed. “I am surprised your mind could handle my psychic surgery.”
I tried to push down my suspicion of the creature. “Gee, thanks. Will the person I was connected to recover now?”
“Perhaps,” it responded.
The Elder Thing was really starting to get on my nerves. I then told it, “There’s one more thing I want you to do.”
“Of course.” The Elder Thing seemed almost annoyed. “Humans always require more. You are not that removed from the primates we elevated you from.”
I was actually pleased the Elder Thing stooped to the level of petty insults. It showed the creature wasn’t so far removed from humanity. “I’m also missing memories: memories that would help me fight the Necromancer you fear.”
The Elder Thing lifted one of his outgrowths, the thing wiggling a bit in the air. If Elder Things had an equivalent of amused disbelief, it was showing it. “The Necromancer is not remotely human, not anymore. It is close to a Great Old One, like the human who became one before named Carter.”
Normally, I would have asked more about a human becoming a Great Old One, but I needed to remain focused on my objective. I can kill him. I have to. I just need to have my missing memories back so I can know what he did to me.
The Elder Thing moved another one of its tendrils over me, leaving a slimy trail up the front of my uniform. “Your collection of neurons is not a difficult pattern to follow, unusual as it may be, nor is it difficult to correct the disrupted pathways.”
Almost immediately, I felt its terrible psychic presence once more force itself into my brain. This time, the agonizing pain was located squarely in my mind.
I struggled to hold onto my rifle, slowly falling back a few steps while my vision blurred. “I don’t … remember anything, yet.”
“The damage will take several more of your minutes to heal.” The Elder Thing seemed to grow slightly more confident. “Do not struggle. We do not intend to kill you. You are an anomaly which must be studied. It will assist my species in its survival while also aiding yours in its. This is a noble cause and should not take more than seventeen hundred cycles.”
I realized what the Elder Thing was talking about seconds later. Two more of its race stepped forth through the doorway before me, both wielding the same crystalline rods which the first had used to kill Richard.
They were lumbering forward, moving at an extremely slow place which was, nevertheless, menacing. They looked almost like demons with tentacles for heads, drawing on the most primordial racial fears of humanity.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, falling back down the stairs as I aimed my assault rifle straight at the fallen Elder Thing’s upper body. Firing, I watched its brain-matter equivalent splatter across the steps. It wasn’t going to help me survive but it felt good to avenge Richard’s death.
The remaining Elder Things proceeded to fire a series of luminescent green globes at my feet. The blasts exploded on the stairs beneath me, sending fragments of stone and dust up into my face. Falling down the staircase, I rolled out of the way of their next attack.
From the erratic nature of their blasts, I determined the Elder Things were not trying to kill, but instead disable me, probably for the sick experiments the dead one had spoken of. I wasn’t about to let that happen. Climbing to my feet as another blast exploded behind me, I made a break for the door. The creatures continued their assault, forcing me to duck and dodge like I was playing football. Finally reaching the bottom of the staircase, I felt my leg burning from pieces of stone shards embedded in them. Staring down at the wound, I saw it was bleeding badly.
Great.
Continuing to shamble down the hall, I finally exited into the Dreamlands outside. There, the sky had once more filled with disturbing unnatural storm clouds. Instead of their earlier familiar faces, they took the form of hideous malformed monsters: things which resembled combinations of Elder Things, Great Old Ones, and humans. The rain pouring down from them had also changed, becoming a mixture of blood and gory chunks of flesh.
“Never trust an E.B.E.,” I coughed. Now drenched in blood, I threw myself onto the ground and took up a defensive position. Holding my assault rifle in hand, I waited for the Elder Things to burst through. My rifle had been almost useless against the first of their kind, and I privately wished I had a bazooka.
Amazingly, the heavy assault rifle began to morph and twist in my hands. Almost like it was clay shaped by a child’s hands, the weapon slowly became a bazooka. I concentrated and focused my will, transforming it into a specific weapon. Not a bazooka, but something packing a bit more punch, a P21 rocket launcher. The P21 was the only Post-Rising Anti-E.B.E. ballistic weapon ever created and it was damned good at its job.
“I’m starting to like the Dreamlands.” I grinned, watching the two Elder Things through the open doorway. The infinite tower was no longer remotely infinite, now merely the size of a moderately tall skyscraper.
Firing my rocket launcher, the rocket sailed between them and exploded into the center of the hallway. For a brief moment, I thought they were both dead, their bodies consumed by the fire I’d created. It would have been a fitting funeral pyre for Richard, a way to celebrate his life by killing more of the beings who had taken it.
Unfortunately, my predictions of victory were premature as neither of them had perished. Like the mythical phoenix, both emerged from the tower doorway covered in fire and looking decidedly pissed off.
“Dammit,” I muttered, imagining another round for my rocket launcher. It was a hard and exacting process, conjuring things from nothing in the Dreamlands. Yet, the creatures weren’t going to wait and I struggled to do it anyway.
Letting forth an unearthly and terrifying roar, like nothing ever produced on this Earth, the Elder Things smashed through the Tower’s doorway and flew into the bloody rain with their crystal rods raised. That was when I got a good look at them, the flames around them dying out. The monsters weren’t completely unharmed; their skins were covered in a gray flaky film that might have been the outer flesh seared by the force of my explosion.
At least I had managed to wound them.
“Shit,” I muttered, watching the rocket I’d been conjuring twist to become unusable dream stuff. I’d let my attention wander and it had ruined the entire effect, giving the monsters time to attack. “This is going to hurt.”
Two spiraling globes of energy shot forth and exploded at the base of my feet. The detonation was like a mine going off beneath me, throwing me in the air along with a pile of dirt. When my body struck the ground, I couldn’t hear a thing through the ringing of my ears and the shaking of my body.
In all likelihood, I was suffering numerous internal injuries that would claim my life without proper medical attention. That is, if my legs hadn’t been completely blown off by the blast; I couldn’t tell at my current vantage. I struggled as I reached over for the rocket launcher. Despite my hands feeling like they weighed a hundred pounds, I tried desperately to reach for it. It was several feet away though, and I had to start pulling myself over towards it. The weapon was unloaded but I could just dream up ammunition.
I wasn’t going to go out without a fight, maimed or not.
That was when the sky opened up and lightning poured down upon both. Not just a single bolt of it but a storm of electricity, hundreds of bolts hitting them one after the other. The terrible torrent didn’t stop until both were little more than charred, ashen shells of their former selves. The Elder Things had no skeletons per se but their ruined interiors were similar enough that it gave me a little thrill. They were dead; there was no question about it. The question was how?
My answer came in the form of a silver-tipped cane pressing against the top of my abdomen. “Ah, John, fancy seeing you here. I knew you would eventually make your way into the Dreamlands, but in the company of Elder Things? Tsk-tsk. You should have told me you shared my passion for destroying the beasts, we could have arranged a hunt.”
I recognized the voice.
Alan Ward had arrived.