It did not take long to get everything loaded up and to depart in two composite “Hummer-class” vehicles. The interior of the Hummer I drove was old and patchwork, but such was the case with most vehicles still operational in the Wasteland. We were passing up through the Sea of Ash, an immense black rock-covered desert that often rained down soot from three low-simmering volcanoes off the coast.
In the distance, I could see several of the lava-river-filled mountains streaming down red fluid as black hydra-mollusk creatures played and danced around them. The hundred-foot-long Tunnelers were one of the many races unveiled by the Rising, but a species I’d had little contact with. I intended to keep it that way. Still, I couldn’t put into words the scratching in the back of my mind. Professor Armitage and the Great One were hiding things from me, that much was sure, but there was a great deal more going on here than their stated agendas. I just wished I had an idea of what.
“A penny for your thoughts, Booth?” Mercury asked, distracting me.
She was sitting beside me in the front of the vehicle I was driving. Like me, she had changed to a set of thick white clothes designed for desert travel with goggles and a mask hanging from her neck. My arm was once more covered in an illusion, but I’d had it bandaged and double-wrapped again, just to be on the safe side.
“I was just contemplating our quest,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror to see Bobbie Merriweather catching a nap in the back. Bobbie had fully recovered and was wearing a pair of denim pants with a long button-down blue shirt.
Having nothing else to do for several hours more, I continued speaking. “This is not an adventure story. Every surviving being, human or otherwise, should be involved in such a quest. Who sends six or seven people out to save the world?”
“I don’t care much for the responsibility of saving everything either,” Mercury said, reaching over to the glove box and pulling out one of the nutrient bars the University had supplied for us. I despised their taste, but they were surprisingly invigorating. “However, we’re getting paid. That’s enough to justify taking the risk.”
“Tell that to Mathew,” Mercury muttered.
“You’re not helping,” I replied.
“You should take comfort in religion. I believe the Elder Gods are behind our journey and will support us in our hunt for this Whateley creature,” Bobbie said, looking up from where she’d been sleeping. Assuming she’d ever been doing so at all versus spying on us when we were freer in our speech.
“Are you trying to convert us?” Mercury asked.
“I believe so,” I said amused. “Which is a shame because you’re an atheist and I’m quite comfortable with polytheism.”
“Any god explainable by science is insufficiently advanced for worship—and everything can be explained by science,” Mercury said, smirking.
“Says the sorceress.” I chuckled.
“Details, details.” Mercury laughed.
“Read the Re’Kithnid,” Bobbie said, shrugging. She looked out the window to the volcanoes dotting the landscape. “It’ll open your eyes to the truth of the universe. From the story about how Re’Kithnid was born from dreams of a counterpart to Dread Cthulhu to when he built a glorious elysium on another world to when he taught the Crow King how to battle the Old Ones with his coffin-shaped chariot.”
I had read the Re’Kithnid. It was a book written in the Thirteenth century by the Heretic Nun Brianna Lethder. Brianna had spoken of Elder Gods opposing the Great Old Ones, an apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil, plus a beatific opposite to Cthulhu called Kithnid. It spoke of how humans, Deep Ones, and ghouls would eventually all become one race with humanity embracing free love with the monsters. It was an honestly rather pornographic work which had only been preserved by perverted old priests long after they had sentenced Brianna and her lovers to death by torture.
“It’s a nice story,” I said, deciding to be honest rather than fake interest in her religion. “But it’s not what I believe.”
“I’m sorry you have no hope then.” Bobbie turned away.
“I give myself my own hope,” I said. “It frees my gods from any responsibility to care for my well-being.”
Bobbie smiled. “I used to believe like that. It was simpler then.”
“How does a Deep One hybrid become a believer in the Elder Gods, anyway?” I asked, feeling a strange desire to continue this conversation.
Bobbie shook her head. “To ask that question is to ask my life story.”
“We’re still a long way from Insmaw,” I responded.
“Regale us, oh bounty hunter, with your tale,” Mercury said, agreeing.
“All right,” Bobbie said, stretching her neck. “A long time ago I was a Deep One princess.”
“Pardon?” I asked, surprised by her statement.
“I didn’t know the Deep Ones had princesses,” Mercury said, blinking. “You also don’t look like a fish-woman. You’d think that would be a requirement to be fish-person royalty.”
“Smooth, Mercury.” I rolled my eyes.
“You’d think, but no,” Bobbie said, ignoring the implicit insult. “I wasn’t strictly a princess, though. It’s just the closest title I can think of for describing my position. My mother was Mother Hydra herself, first of the Deep Ones and mother as well as consort to Dagon the Second. They were the weakest of the Great Old Ones spoken of in the Necronomicon but still members of that body. Obviously, my name wasn’t Bobbie then, but I cast aside my old identity when I abandoned the gods of my people.”
I whistled, impressed by her pedigree. Not everyone could lay claim to being half-Great Old One.
Mercury just listened, attentive.
Bobbie continued, uninterested in our response. “My father was one of the many humans sacrificed by Obed Marsh during the early days of Innsmouth’s accursed pact with my people. My mother raped him with her powers, then devoured his bones, birthing me a year later. I was but a school of such spawn and we battled it out nightly until only I remained. The Hydra only wanted the strongest of her brood to live as a lesson for what was expected of me as her priestess.”
“Charming,” I said.
Mercury just grimaced.
“The Deep Ones are not an innately evil species, but time has bent them to perversities you would not believe.” Bobbie sighed, this clearly a subject of deep importance to her. “I was raised to believe that the Deep Ones were the true humanity, that other races deserved to be destroyed, and that Great Cthulhu’s rise would trigger the destruction of the unbeliever across the globe.” Bobbie smiled, but it was a bitter one. “I’m afraid it came as a great shock to the High Priests of my race when Cthulhu didn’t deign to notice us when he rose. My people had worshiped him for over a million years, and yet his awakening destroyed as much of our civilization as yours.”
“That must have caused a crisis of faith,” I said.
“Is that when you converted to worshiping the Elder Gods?” Mercury asked.
“No, not then.” Bobbie made a little Elder Sign symbol with her finger across her chest. I was surprised it didn’t cause her to flinch. Such magic was poison to the Deep Ones and other creatures of Cthulhu. “The High Priests of Dagon blamed the intermixing of the Deep One race with ‘lesser species’ like humans, Serpent Men, and ghouls. Already devastated by the Rising, they organized a genocide of all those of mixed blood who did not flee to the surface. Millions of our kind perished in the resulting purge.”
“What did Mother Hydra have to say about all this?” Mercury asked.
“Nothing,” Bobbie snorted. “She joined with Cthulhu on R’lyeh, taking all of her high priestesses with her—but me. I had been unable to hear the call because I was too busy mourning all of my dead lovers and offspring. I had dozens by that time.”
My biggest surprise from her story wasn’t the alien behavior of the Deep Ones, but the opposite. Similar stories had played out across the surface world as people found excuses for their gods in old prejudices or abandoned the world for the worship of terrible things beyond. In that, they were no different than humanity.
“So you fled to the surface?” I asked, intrigued by her story.
“Not at first.” Bobbie shook her head. “Rules do not apply to those who make them. This is a truism for both our societies. As a High Priestess, I was given a special dispensation. But it may surprise you to find out that even a Deep One princess can feel horror at the massacre of the innocent. My faith was broken, and while I might have excused Cthulhu’s or Hydra’s actions as a priestess, I could not claim what the High Priests of Dagon were doing was just.”
It made me ashamed to hate my inhumanity as much as I did. “One’s humanity is found in the oddest places.”
“I find that remark insulting,” Bobbie said, before giving a half-hearted smile. “I used magic to give myself a human appearance and led as many refugees as I could to the surface. Since then, I have fought against my people’s enemies as best I can. Humans, monsters, Deep Ones, or otherwise. The hybrids of the surface are a part of this world now, and both of its parent species must accept that.”
“How’s that worked out for you?” I asked.
Bobbie’s smile fled her face. “I’ve buried two husbands and three wives. The first of my husbands tried to burn me alive along with our children when he found out my true nature. The others died of disease, violence, and old age.”
“If you say so,” I said, wondering if any of us had that kind of time. “You still haven’t explained how you came to worship the Elder Gods.”
“I figured if I was going to be damned by my gods, their enemies would be a better choice,” Bobbie said. “I learned the secrets of the faith from a man named Carter. Now my people worship the Elder Gods, primarily out of trust for me. Even if they have never answered a prayer and only respond to my spells, it feels like I have reclaimed myself from my mother. I worship what I believe in, not what those who betrayed the hybrids among us tell me to.”
“That, I understand.” I prayed nightly to Yahweh, Jesus, the Buddha, and other deities of the Pre-Rising Earth. Beings I’d never seen a miracle or wonder to prove the existence of as I had with Nyarlathotep and the Great Old Ones. Even so, I clung to those feelings, as they felt like a ward against the darkness. In my mind, even if I could not say whether or not they existed outside of the Dreamlands. “I take it the Insmaw folk are known to you?”
“Yes, I’ve dealt with them before,” Bobbie said. “They’re good people, uninterested in the affairs of the outside world. They just wish to live and breed in peace.”
“Some would say that was a threat by itself,” Mercury said, staring forward into the desert before.
“Some would be assholes,” Bobbie replied.
Mercury laughed. “Some would like to apologize.”
“I’ll accept that,” Bobbie replied, shrugging. “What is your view of being a human hybrid?”
“That you shouldn’t ask,” I said.
“I see,” Bobbie said.
We rode in silence after that point. Eventually, we came across a sight that caused me to forget about our conversation. Hundreds of spikes, each standing hundreds of feet tall, dotted the landscape. They were made of some sort of eerie black metal, existing both in this dimension and several adjoining ones, causing the mere sight of them to overwhelm human vision. Shooting between them were streams of electricity in colors and arcs I’d never seen the like of. These strange pylons altered the air around us and as we drew closer, I could feel an ionization of particles in the oxygen around me.
Storm clouds swirled around this strange forest and electricity flew from the sky down to the pylons before different-colored bolts shot back up into the sky. The world around became hazy, and I felt the same sort of “otherness” about this area that I’d felt in the Hinton Library. This was not a place of this world, this strange power station, and it was transforming our space into something other-natural.
“A Faceless One refinery,” Bobbie said, staring. “Shit.”
“You know what that is?” Mercury said, clutching the side of her seat and burying her nails into it as if on a festival coaster.
“Is this new?” I asked, unable to believe such a massive structure had been constructed recently.
“I’m afraid so,” Bobbie said. “The way was clear last time I went this way.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“Two weeks.”
I took a deep breath. “Who are these Faceless Ones? Are they friendly?”
“Does the name ‘Faceless One’ scream friendly?” Mercury asked.
“No, it implies they don’t have mouths,” I said.
Mercury snorted despite herself.
Bobbie’s expression was grave. “The Faceless Ones are a new race, or to be precise, a very old race that has been in hiding for a long time.” Bobbie looked uncomfortable even talking about them. “They have begun building their strange machines and terrible devices across the world. No one knows to which gods, if any, they pray, but they wield knowledge as to make the University look like a tribe of cavemen.”
“Great,” Mercury grunted. “Because we didn’t have enough crazy-ass shit on this trip.”
I didn’t bother mentioning this wasn’t even in the top ten strangest things we’d seen in the Wasteland. Picking up my radio, I contacted the other Hummer. “We need to get out of here now. We can’t risk any conflicts we don’t know how to deal with.”
“Where? Toward the volcanoes and the giant hydra monsters or to the left and the place where they impale people?” Thom asked.
“Where they impale people,” I said, without hesitating. I didn’t know to what he was referring, but I’d take it over Tunnelers and volcanoes. I’d never been this far north. “We’ll take the long way around.”
“OK, you’re the leader,” Thom said in the most sarcastic manner possible.
Thom’s vehicle turned left, as did mine, only for the sky to start raining down bolts of alien energy upon our heads.