Like the breaking of a dam, I felt the barriers erected by the Yithians shatter on the Tower of Zhaal and the Unimaginable Horror come forth like a tsunami into this world. All throughout the tower, blackish, foul water carrying something vile poured out onto the desert around us.
Like the Biblical Flood, there was a terrible sense of purpose to this water, and it moved in disturbing, animated ways, grabbing Faceless Ones from the sides of the tower and dragging them screaming into its shadowy depths. At the top of the tower, surrounded by the dead, we were ignored by it for the time being, even as I could see into its horrid depths and comprehend the true dreadful majesty of its malevolence.
The Unimaginable Horror was more than just a corruption, a living ocean of foulness. As more and more water poured out, I could see the guiding spirit animating the liquid and shuddered instinctively. It was an energy field, a presence, and a matter all at once—a strange color that existed nowhere in the human visual spectrum and was just as strange to that of a Kastro’vaal.
The Unimaginable Horror was like a gigantic hand of a three-dimensional being reaching into a two-dimensional world, stretching itself outward. A sick, mad part of my mind was grateful to realize there was no way to comprehend the totality of its terribleness. It showed me that, even in my newfound alien state, there were still mysteries too nightmarish to comprehend. Even a species as close to the Great Old Ones as the Eyes of Yog-Sothoth was nothing more than another rung on a perverse mockery of Jacob’s Ladder, descending ever deeper down a tunnel of madness. The Unimaginable Horror was the unnatural disaster that would end all life on this Earth and perhaps destroy the universe someday. It had helped create all life on this planet for the purposes of devouring it, and tonight was the night of its harvest.
It was a god. The universe did not care about mortals, their problems or fears. The universe did not care about gods either, though. For as a bleak and pitiless as this world we lived in was, there was a cold comfort knowing that it favored everyone equally. Great Old One or insect, one could manipulate the natural forces guiding the universe, but they did not offer an ounce of succor.
A thimbleful of sympathy.
In that respect, the Unimaginable Horror—no, Oroarchan—was no better or worse than us. Death might die for the Great Old Ones, and it served as no permanent prison for their kind. Yet with strange aeons (and these were very strange aeons), I’d seen a human and his daughter brought back to life through Nyarlathotep’s own technology of the mind. The Great Old Ones, too, could be beaten and imprisoned, as the Yithians had shown. A swarm of bee stings could kill a man under the right circumstances, and it was my hope that we were that swarm.
If not, the Earth’s lesser races were doomed.
“Cast the spell!” I shouted to Mercury and August. Both my companions were as mesmerized by the sight below as I was, staring at the ever-growing mass beneath us that would soon drown out the tower.
“Right!” August said, shaken by the sight and clutching Doctor Ward’s book against his chest.
Mercury went to my side, cold but determined. Giving me a kiss on the lips, she looked into my eyes, shook her head and joined August in casting the spell. I did not think for a moment she’d forgiven me, but here, at the end of the world, it was an acknowledgment that there would always be love between us. Which was what made my actions cut the deepest.
Shaking my head, I took position in a triangle with August as he began to read. Mercury’s magic, when added to August’s, was possibly equal to that of the late Alan Ward’s. I felt them draw on the deep psychic reservoirs of the race I was now a part of. They drew on my knowledge, too, using the long-dead wizards in my past to make calculations impossible for normal humans. All three of us, together, provided enough force to perform the summoning.
Even so, I don’t think we would have been able to complete the spell if not for the protection provided by our insignificance. The merest outstretch of Oroarchan godlike mind would have vaporized us. It didn’t sense us, though. The being was too busy bringing itself to full power. Just watching the ever-expanding sea of nightmares made me wonder if the Great Old One would drown the world, but instead I focused on serving as a vessel for the spell being cast.
I sensed Marcus Whateley’s presence join us during our enchantment, and the extra-dimensional, quantum-physics-defying being provided his own additions to the spell. Our minds became linked with his and a strange geometry filled our heads. Infinite angles, connections, and computations became as child’s play among us.
Working on the spell for centuries, Alan Ward could never have succeeded any more than apes working the controls of a helicopter. Yet the man we’d been hired to kill gave us the intelligence necessary to do so.
And we did.
A black light burst from the ground beneath us, enhanced and magnified by the Tower of Zhaal below. Like a signal flare, it shot through all corners of the universe and sent a signal out to the one higher being in the cosmos we believed might reasonably care whether Oroarchan destroyed the Earth or not.
Ku’tulu.
Ku’tulu.
Ku’tulu.
The voices in my head sang of Azathoth’s High Priest, the Lord of R’lyeh, and the greatest of the Great Old Ones. He (she? it?) was the exception to the rule about the universe caring about something. I felt the entirety of the cosmos warping with his arrival, as if the gods above Nyarlathotep had only been watching my struggles in anticipation for his arrival.
Oroarchan’s water-based body boiled and twisted with the casting of the spell. I was fully prepared for the being to destroy us in that moment, but he did not. Oroarchan was more concerned with the flames than the animal. I didn’t even know if our mad, desperate gamble was going to work. We were making a call upon Cthulhu, but there was no guarantee he’d answer. Who knew what that dreaming god cared about now that he was awake and wandering the universe, doing whatever gods did. He might have greater concerns than the release of Oroarchan, and our desperate summoning was little more than a prayer anyway.
A prayer I was surprised to see was answered.
The arrival of Cthulhu was heralded by an impenetrable fog. It rolled forth across the ground and around us from parts unknown, blanketing our surroundings. The clouds above us became a swirling vortex of storms with lightning of a hundred different colors crisscrossing in varied directions. The moist air felt toxic due to the presence of Oroarchan in every molecule of water.
“Oh God, it’s coming,” Mercury whispered, her voice quaking with a fear I’d never heard.
“Yes,” I said, my voice every bit as terrified as hers.
August clutched Alan Ward’s book against his chest and fell to the ground, laughing as if aware of the immensity of the doom we’d brought down upon ourselves.
I caught my first glimpse of Cthulhu when the fog cloud began to part and its awful beautiful face was illuminated by lightning. I shut my eyes to any dimension but the ones visible to humans, but I couldn’t bring myself to close those, too. Looking upon Cthulhu’s terrible majesty, I felt my heart beat faster than ever. Cthulhu was, without a doubt, a mountain that walked. A mile tall if it was an inch, and that was just its projected self overlaying a much grander being that moved through reality as if it were its own universe.
I’d seen thousands of idols dedicated to Cthulhu over the decades, but none of them caught a glimmer of the true, awesome visage of Azathoth’s most perfect son. No demon, god, or monster of Earth’s mythology could approach Cthulhu’s glory. He was and forever would be.
For posterity’s sake, even if such a thing was not to be for much longer, I’ll try to describe what I saw rather than felt. Great Cthulhu, as mentioned, dwarfed all skyscrapers in his size, seeming to stand as tall as the Tower of Zhaal. Its head had three baleful black eyes on each side and was bedecked with a thousand tentacles at the base of its long, stretched-out skull.
The creature’s body was a rubbery thick mass that seemed almost flabby, as if there were too much of it to be seen in the space it occupied. Yet as it stretched forth, the creature seemed to become taut and muscular like a lean predator. The creature had wings, but they were not leathery like a bat’s or feathered like a bird’s, but composed of the same sinew-like substance as the rest of his body.
And its presence.
Dear God, its presence!
If I were to say every cell in Great Cthulhu’s body contained intelligence equal to a man and the psychic will thereof, I would sound like a lunatic—but there it was. Cthulhu was a nation unto itself, much like the shoggoths in that every part of him/it/her was alive. The destruction of humanity by the Great Old Ones’ awakening was rendered morally justified by its rising, as I realized that all those who died were less than a fraction of those living inside the Prince of the Old Ones.
Worse still, I recognized the siren call of the voices inside Cthulhu as the ones inside my own head. The distant call of Azathoth’s court where the Blind Idiot God was worshiped by nameless entities was matched by Great Cthulhu’s own mind. For the past year, I had been unwittingly hearing the song of Cthulhu.
That was when Cthulhu spoke.
What Cthulhu said I could not say, for it was not directed to me but to Oroarchan. Like being struck by the heat of a nuclear bomb, one couldn’t be even the least bit psychic and fail to be overwhelmed by his words.
“Ah!” Mercury screamed, tears running down her face while she clutched her head.
“Please!” August tried to tear out his own eyes, dropping the journal, only for him to collapse before his hands reached his face.
I just stood there, frozen in place. I felt Nyarlathotep’s terrible presence reach into my mind then and force all of my extra senses open. I was forced to watch the conflict between Cthulhu and the Unimaginable Horror in its full, terrible glory. There were things I did not witness, thank all that is holy, but what I did see would haunt me through this life and every one thereafter.
I saw the Oroarchan reach with its aluminiferous tendrils to the distant world of Xash, where it was worshiped by the world’s degenerate, once-civilized people. Every being of every age was killed to provide Oroarchan the strength to grapple mentally with Cthulhu. Cthulhu responded by ripping out the corona of a distant star and hurling at it at the heart of Oroarchan in another layer of reality. The only reason all life on Earth wasn’t instantly destroyed by the opening salvos of their battle was because it was being fought on an entirely higher order of the Multiverse.
Yet to say this battle did not affect the Earth would have been lying. Children were born without eyes, volcanos erupted in the sea as well as long-lost mountain ranges, earthquakes toppled cities, and whole swaths of the Tunneler race died off. I’d invited the Devil to sit down at our table and the consequences were not easily dismissed.
In a terrible moment, I wondered if this fight would last for aeons, destroying much of the universe before finally being settled. After all, I had no idea how long it had taken Cthulhu to defeat Oroarchan during their first battle, and that had been waged with many Great Old Ones against one. This might even prove to be worse than letting Oroarchan go free, because the being was a plague on the universe, but it killed slowly.
Almost as soon as it had begun, the fight was over. The sea of living water collapsed into a gigantic lake of inanimate fluid. Cthulhu had triumphed over its opponent, though it did not seem triumphant. Pointless as it was to read emotions into a being that wasn’t even physically there, I thought the most powerful of the Great Old Ones seemed weary.
The fog proceeded to produce four more shadowy figures. They were Great Old Ones of the same substance and species as Cthulhu, reminding me that the inhabitants of ancient R’lyeh hadn’t been Cthulhu alone, but his entire race. I fancied these to be Cthulhu’s sons and daughters, though I admit this to be nothing more than a fancy on my part. The five Great Old Ones moved to form a pentagram-like position around the Tower of Zhaal, which compelled me to grab both Mercury as well as August. Marcus was nowhere to be found, and he could move anywhere he wanted anyway.
Both Mercury and August were limp, comatose figures in my arms, but knowing the alternative was to be subject to whatever these terrible beings were planning, I leapt over the side of the tower with them both before transforming into a winged creature similar to a byakhee. I settled on a distant desert patch where the edges of Oroarchan’s form had created an artificial beach. There, I looked back to see the five Great Old Ones work perilous magic upon the Tower of Zhaal.
The Yithians’ own advanced work and sorcery was cast aside, to be replaced with something far sturdier. The Re’Kithnid’s claims of benevolent Great Old Ones now seemed far less insane. I saw the Tower of Zhaal vanish into the mists, once more leaving this reality, and hoped it would never be seen again upon this Earth. The four Great Old Ones that had accompanied Cthulhu also disappeared, returning to whatever distant parts of the universe or dimensions they hailed from.
Cthulhu himself remained. The rugose horror lifted its flabby claws into the air and the ocean at my feet slowly rose into the sky before spreading around the planet. The waters that had comprised their foe’s body transformed into rain across the planet, and where its droplets fell, strange new mutant plant life grew. Humanity might perish over the next few decades, but through this act of divine providence, the Earth would recover and produce new life in future centuries.
I stood in awe.
That was when I felt Great Cthulhu’s gaze turn upon me, and there was a single moment where I felt the entire universe’s attention.
Cthulhu spoke, its psychic presence translating to English. “I know you.”
With that, Cthulhu vanished as well.
And the world was silent.