I jolted violently from my dream and went for my gun. Mercury had an equally dramatic reaction to the sudden assault. She fell right out of the bed and was staring around at her surroundings like she couldn’t quite believe what was going on. Then, without hesitation, she grabbed the twin shotguns under the bed and tossed me one.
“We need to know what’s happening,” I said, sliding out of the bed and going to the window.
“No shit!” Mercury shouted, heading to the front door of our room.
Staring out the window, I caught a glimpse of a slice of hell on Earth. It was not a sign of the Rising, though. The Rising had brought countless demons and abominations every bit as terrible as the ones in Dante’s Inferno, but this, unfortunately, was an old evil. One that had been with mankind since the very beginning. War. The oceans had belched forth an army of the pure-blooded bibulous gray-skinned Deep Ones. It was no simple raid.
It was as Bobbie said—they’d come to kill their part-human kin. They seemed to stretch out from the town to the coastline, a hideous swarm of warrior mermen with a pair of mystically enslaved shoggoths and twenty-foot-tall Cthulhuoid horrors warped by magic into the image of R’lyeh’s lord. Men, women, and children of human as well as Deep One lineage were dragged from their homes by the invaders before being put to the sword. The attacking Deep Ones did not spare a single person they found, killing them in horrifying ways and sacrificing the efficiency of organized military tactics for unorganized slaughter.
It was to the credit of Insmaw’s people that they did not stand still for this massacre. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched, they had been living in fear of assault by their brothers for decades. The townsfolk used pistols, rifles, homemade dynamite, and even farming or kitchen equipment to kill as many attackers as they could. The Insmaw folk were not without their own magic either. I saw Bobbie casting a spell above the rooftop of the church.
A glow encircled one of the shoggoths and the creature turned against the Deep Ones around it, causing many to start screaming as the gelatinous, black oozing things began devouring parts of the attacking army. One thing that stuck in my head as I turned away from the scene was that the freed shoggoth didn’t harm any of the townsfolk as it began its murder spree. I’d long known the blob-like race was intelligent, but it stunned me to realize they cared about something so mundane as vengeance against the right people.
“What’s going on outside?” Mercury said, having armed herself with extra bullets and weapons.
I searched for something sufficient to explain the chaos. In the end, I went with truth. “The village is under attack by pure-blooded Deep Ones. There’s too many of them to fight and they’re killing everyone. We have to get out of here.”
“I see,” Mercury said. “Should we try and help some flee?”
I thought about what to say. We didn’t have room. “We’ll offer to take the hotel manager’s kids to safety, him and his spouse, too. I don’t think we can fit anyone else. We won’t have time to unload either.” We also needed those supplies to survive. It was not a moral decision; it was one of cold, impersonal logic. I was getting sick of those.
“Sounds good,” Mercury said, opening the door. “Let’s try and kill some of the attackers on our way to the vehicles.”
“Agreed,” I said, not mentioning it was quite possible our transports were destroyed. In which case, we were fucked.
Cocking my shotgun, I took a deep breath and started moving with Mercury down the staircase to get the rest of our group, which had been staying on the second floor. Much to my surprise, I saw the entirety of them, sans Bobbie, were already gathered at the base of the hotel. Jessica was shooting a heavy-assault rifle around the side while Thom fired his revolvers, holstering them, and then pulling them back out to shoot again without any need to reload.
While Thom’s method of killing was flashier, Jessica seemed to be achieving a higher number of kills. August was magically pulling Deep Ones to his side and slitting their throats with a large kukri knife. The blood seemed to be gathering in front of our group and forming a protective shield, one that often lashed out with a crimson tentacle to eat passersby. There was a pile of weapons on the ground at their feet, showing they’d taken everything dangerous from our vehicles.
Holding out my shotgun, I saw a trio of Deep One assassins moving across the rooftops above our heads. I shot upwards, Mercury joining me, and the three fell over the sides before they could come down on top of our heads. More of the killers moved above, carrying nets and knives, only to be gunned down by the two of us.
“We need longer-ranged weapons,” I told Mercury.
“You think?” Mercury said, the two of us reaching the side of our group and exchanging our shotguns for rifles.
“What’s our situation, Corporal?” I asked Jessica.
“Screwed, Captain,” Jessica said. “The Salmon Heads have us hopelessly outnumbered, got a bunch of monsters, and have no real perception of their own mortality.”
“The latter is our advantage,” Thom said, shooting more Deep Ones and causing them to explode into flames.
“Where do you get that ammunition?” I asked, staring at him, before aiming at another Deep One and firing.
“It doesn’t use ammunition. It shoots microscopic particles from a dimension hotter than the sun,” Thom answered.
I paused, looking at him. “You realize that should cause the atmosphere to ignite, right?”
“It doesn’t, though, Mister Science.”
“Hey!” Mercury said, shooting yet another Deep One off the roof. “If anyone is Mister Science around here, it’s me.”
August’s attack seemed to ionize the air around us. “Not to interrupt you all acting like fucking children, but we need a plan.”
“We need to leave,” I said, noticing we were already running low on ammunition.
“That’s an objective, not a plan!” August shouted, falling on his knees from the exertions of his spellcasting. The bloody coagulation in front of us started to pulsate with hot, angry energy. “We need a coherent strategy, and I suggest we do it soon. The Beast Beyond is not exactly satisfied with the occasional fish; it wants the whole ocean of our dimension.”
“We get to the cars, now!” I shouted, shooting the head of a gold-jewelry-adorned Deep One shaman.
“What about Bobbie?” Mercury said, firing as more and more of the attacking Deep Ones started turning their attention to us.
“Jessica, get her on the walkie-talkie, we’re leaving now!” I shouted, making my decision. “Everyone else, cover our movement!”
Much of the town was on fire or leveled now, the giant monsters summoned by both sides having started to smash into each other while the assailants pulled back. They’d realized, perhaps, that the battle was not going to be the easy massacre they’d expected even if they’d already killed half of Insmaw’s population and only lost a fraction of their number.
Insmaw’s citizens littered the ground, many impaled or chopped to pieces, as their foes wasted valuable fighting time defacing corpses. I’d seen worse displays in my life, but few. Just as our group was about to head off, Thom broke ranks and ran around the side of the building in the opposite direction from our vehicles. I didn’t get a chance to shout, so perplexed was I by his actions, when he led Farmer Joe and his two daughters our way. He covered them the entire way with his pistols.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Mercury shouted, knocking away a Deep One who came around our shield with the butt of her rifle. She then shoved the barrel into its mouth and pulled the trigger, splattering the ground in front of us.
Thom shot a few more times before falling back to the center of our group. “I don’t like fish-fuckers, farmers, or self-righteous Great Old One worshipers. I hate people who hurt kids even more, though. These assholes aren’t sparing any.”
I gave Thom a nod of approval. He’d earned my respect in that moment, even if I wouldn’t spend time with him socially.
“Thank you,” Farmer Joe said, breathing fast as he held both his girls in his arms as if they were small packages.
“Is your wife nearby?” Jessica asked, holding the walkie-talkie she’d use to contact Bobbie.
Farmer Joe gave a pained shake of his head.
“Then let’s move!” I shouted, grabbing my shotgun off the ground again and abandoning the rest of our weapons. The Deep Ones were now coming upon us in great numbers and no matter how many we killed, there seemed to be more to replace them. It was a fanatical madness driving their attack, one determined to cleanse their race of the “human taint.”
It made me angry.
There was no sign of Bobbie, and I didn’t know if she was going to make it or not, but we continued to fight our way towards the Hummers. I could see both of them were intact and there was no sign the Deep Ones were making a move to destroy them. The gunfire, spellcasting, and shouts drowned out all other noise around us as I killed my tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Deep One. It was sickening, a horrid waste of life over a pointless distinction. Azathoth … Azathoth … Azathoth. I felt strange. Woozy. The blood called to me and I started seeing things that weren’t there. My daughter, when she was fifteen-years-old, walking through the carnage as if she didn’t have a care in the world; Gabriel, studying his geometry homework; Little Jackie, playing catch with me; and Mercury, naked while covered in blood, beckoning me to join her.
I screamed, firing into the crowds of attacking monsters. My shoulder burned and every single one of the runes on it seemed to fade away at once, letting the corruption inside fester through the entirety of my body. The carnage, combined with the sorcery being thrown about, had undone my meager protections against the transformation.
Fuck.
Foul-tasting blackish ichor started to pour out of my mouth as we reached the Hummers. I fell to my knees, my vision becoming blurry. I felt the corruption pass through my veins, devouring my insides and replacing them with something else. I saw the veins in my hand turn black, the skin becoming a dusky gray. My nails fell off before the bone tips under my fingers began to press through. I could hear everything going on in the battle at once, the sounds of battle becoming a dissonant cacophony.
“Booth!” Mercury shouted. Before she could run toward me, Thom grabbed her.
“He’s dead! Leave him!” Thom said, forfeiting most of the respect I’d afforded him.
I didn’t get a chance to respond because a massive twenty-foot-tall Cthulhuoid horror smashed itself onto one of the Hummers, knocking it to the side with its left hand.
I could barely see it from my position on the ground, but what I could see was terrifying. In addition to its enormous size, it was a collection of mutated Deep One flesh and strange matter which, while still humanoid, embodied an alien power as far beyond the Deep Ones’ comprehension as their knowledge of the Great Old Ones was beyond ours.
The creature’s face was reminiscent of the many horrors in clay worshiped by cultists I’d seen over the years. Long cephalopod tentacles hung from around the monster’s circular sharp-teeth-filled mouth. Its head was unnaturally large, particularly the brain-case. The creature had eight long fingers on each hand, each looking like they could tear through a man like wet tissue paper.
The Cthulhuoid horror’s body was a bloated muscular mass of fat rubbery skin hanging over a far more muscular frame with a disgusting spider-web pattern of purple veins spread throughout. It was naked but sexless, with expansive dragon-ish wings on its back that could not carry a being of such weight, yet somehow clearly had.
Perhaps the most terrible part of the thing, however, was its two rows of three black eyes arranged in triangles. They held an inhuman but recognizable intelligence behind them, radiating hateful menace towards my group. I felt the powerful psychic emanations of its emotions radiating like lethal doses of radiation, scarring my soul with their malevolence.
The creature was, at heart, nothing more than a mutated Deep One. A being who, like me, had drifted too close to the Great Old Ones in their dreams and somehow absorbed a portion of their accursed essence. It fought for the Deep Ones, but it was no more akin to them than humans were to the ooze that had crawled from the ocean in primordial times. I didn’t have time to ponder this fact, for the creature and my party’s fate was sealed by the next few moments’ events.
“Shoot the fucker!” Thom shouted, lifting up his revolvers and firing into its chest.
The shots of mystical fire from another dimension were not effective this time, splattering against the strange matter of the creature’s flesh like raindrops. Everyone else’s attacks were equally ineffective. August maintained his bloody shield against the spells and hurled weapons of the Deep Ones.
The creature reached down and grabbed Thom in its left fist, and taking the defiant gunslinger’s top half in its right, then proceeded to pull him in half with a sickening crunch. I and my group were showered in blood and gore before it threw the pieces away. Smacking its left palm to the side, it sent Jessica flying through the air like a baseball, smacking her body against the side of Vastarara’s statue and shattering her spine.
“Jessica!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, unable to breathe.
Mercury shouted a scream of anger and grief, invoking the god who had tormented me for years in Azathoth. Black-red lightning flew from her fingertips, wrapping and arcing around the Cthulhuoid horror. This caused the creature pain as it reared backwards, letting out an unearthly cry. Yet it then struck down the group with a telekinetic blow, which August sought to deflect with his shield, but everyone was sent flying. Vomiting blood, ichor, and worse on the ground, I could feel my flesh tearing as something new started to come up from underneath it.
“You…” I said, my mouth dribbling gore. “You hurt Jessica.”
I stared at the creature as my entire world went red. My hands ripped at my flesh and pulled it off, tearing away the mask I’d worn all my life. New appendages grew out as my old body sloshed to the ground like a discarded chrysalis. I stretched forth, a terrible butterfly unveiled for all the world to see.
My true self was revealed.
And I attacked.