EX OBLIVIONE
We were eating a late dinner in our new canteen when the leviathan haulers finally arrived. They’d flown over ten thousand miles without stopping, slowing only for in-air refuelling and safety checks. Their cargo, over 6,000 tons of kaiju, hung in harnesses beneath the squadrons of helicopters, and were secured by reinforced plasma rope. They’d been kept in stasis the entire journey, and would be grumpy when they woke up.
“You think she’s right?” Kiyo stood beside me, munching on a granola bar as we watched the leviathans deliver their cargo.
“I think enough important people do, enough to justify our being here, anyway.”
“That’s not what I asked, Daniel.”
“I know, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around this end of the world thing. I definitely felt something looking at those pictures, and you can’t tell me the stars haven’t started looking a little weird right now.”
Kiyo leaned against my arm and stared up at the sky with me.
“They look like tiny lanterns against a stormy sea.”
“Poetic,” I said with a smile. I turned to get another hot dog when Maks rushed into the canteen, waving his arms at us.
“Turn on television,” he said, still chewing on his dinner. “Quick!”
“What’s up?” I looked around the table for the remote, before Maks turned on the television manually.
“It’s bad.” He swallowed his food and flipped through the channels, muttering beneath his breath. “Real bad, cap, real bad.”
He settled on a channel and turned up the volume before coming over to join us. A curly haired blonde reporter was staring into the camera, reading out a breaking news story while images played out beside her. The footage looked like it was out of a dystopian horror. Tanks were rolling through Washington DC. Military personnel were setting up roadblocks all across the city. More footage showed a firefight between the military and private citizens. It was over in seconds.
And in China, calamity has struck after nuclear warheads were deployed in the cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Nanjing. Casualties are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, with unconfirmed reports listing President Xi Jinping among those who have died.
“What the hell is going on.” I watched in horror as scenes from all over the world played out on the news. A military coup in the United States, assassinations across all levels of government, riots in India, Europe, and Russia. The complete breakdown of order.
The television went off, and I turned around to find Doctor Fern standing with the remote pointed at the screen.
“It’s happening sooner than I expected.” She dropped the remote on the table and waited for the questions she knew would follow.
Maks was furious. “You knew this would happen? How? Why?”
She raised a placatory hand and waited for the redness to leave his face. “I had an idea,” she said once he’d calmed. “You must understand, His worshippers have been preparing for this for centuries—infiltrating governments, military, media, everything they can get their fingers into. Now, they are making ready for His arrival.” Her voice quivered for a moment, before she composed herself. “My teams have failed to uproot the cults. We’ll only have one more chance to stop Him before it’s too late.”
I flinched as the first siren in the compound started to wail. It was joined by another, and then another, until the whole facility was one blaring alarm.
Claire nodded sadly and stared up into the night sky. “He is awakening.”
I was strapped into the chest of a refitted CH-53K King Stallion helicopter, along with the rest of my team. The hold had long since been cleared out of anything deemed unnecessary, and a unit of tech wizards sat scrolling through reams of data. Three of the screens were dedicated solely to King’s vitals. I could see his dual hearts beating a steady pace as the pressure from stasis was slowly lifted. He’d be fully awake by the time we committed to neural linking, and then my work would begin.
Doctor Fern sat beside Kiyo to my left, while Maks had taken to standing beside the port-side gunner, putting everyone in the hold on edge.
“Stars aren’t right,” he said into his headset, glancing back at us.
I looked out of the closest window and took a deep breath. I’d seen photos of Westerhout 5 and the Taurus Cloud Complex—beautiful, celestial clusters of red and blue that shone like fire from space—but even they paled in comparison to the sky above our heads.
A dense mass of swirling light and colour blanketed the heavens. Star formations I’d never seen before hovered between great clouds of molecular gas. Wisps of colour rippled between the clusters, and I felt my head start to spin. Everything appeared closer than it should, like someone had magnified the sky and brought it closer to us.
“We’re nearly there.” Claire had unstrapped from her harness and was standing next to me, staring out the window. “It won’t be long now before He awakens. It’s best you ready yourself for deployment.”
I nodded, and then signalled to Kiyo and Maks as I undid my harness. My squadmates moved in beside me as I walked across the hold, a hand gripped tight to the railing for balance. One of our support staff helped strap us into the seats of the cockpit, before he plugged us into the interface. A screen was shoved in front of my face and cables plugged into pads on the side of my head. Finally, I felt the cold steel tip of a needle pierce my arm as relaxant was pumped into my veins. The whole process took less than a minute, and I settled into my seat, waiting for the neural link to activate.
The first time I’d linked to King had nearly been the last. His vast consciousness had threatened to swallow my own, and it was only through the quick thinking of my team that I’d managed to get out at all. The second time had been better, and by the third time the operation was deemed a success. Still, there was always the threat that, one day, I’d slip and disappear forever. Pilots don’t like to dwell on that fact, and most of us acted like it couldn’t happen at all. But I knew… I’d been close enough to almost touch it.
People think neural linking gives us control of the kaiju we pilot. Even the term ‘pilot’ seems to indicate as much. In reality, we’re more like handlers than anything else. We don’t gain direct control of our ward, but we can make suggestions and try to influence the way the kaiju think. We just stopped them from going on a rampage, mostly. Maks had once said we were “passengers in the back seat, trying to tell the driver where to go.” I liked that.
Claire walked across the hold towards us, her hair flowing out behind her in the wind. She stopped beside my seat and stared at the visual on the screen before me. Our chopper was trailing just behind the leviathan haulers, and King, Riptide, and Bonehead still hung from their harnesses. From King’s twitching tails, I could see he was close to waking up.
Beneath the squadron of haulers, the sea was a heaving mass of thundering waves and murky black water.
“There’s nowhere to deploy,” I said, still watching the screen. My words were slightly slurred as the relaxant started to make its presence felt. “Unless you want to drop us right into the sea?”
“Give it a second.”
We waited for a minute, and then another, before Kiyo nudged me with her arm from the seat beside me. “Look,” she said, pointing a finger at a dark smudge on her screen.
I stared hard at the smudge, before I realised what it was I was seeing, and then gasped despite myself. Land was emerging from the ocean, even as we watched.
A coastline of mud and ooze rose steadily before us, buffeted by the waves that hammered against it. Strange buildings grew from out of the sea, monolithic edifices formed from colossal, greenish stone blocks. Cyclopean statues the size of skyscrapers pierced the night sky triumphantly, their blasphemous visages leering loathsomely across the mud banks.
Behind them, a great acropolis broke out from beneath the waves, and streams of water ran off the structures like steaming rivers. There was something strange about the architecture of the buildings, something that made my stomach flip. The shapes and angles had no logic to them, no bearing on our reality. They should not have worked, adopting some contorted form of spherical geometry that had no place in our universe. And yet, there it stood, rising from the sea like some dread citadel.
“R’yleh,” Claire whispered.
I pulled my eyes away from the screen and turned to the doctor. She was breathing heavily, and sweat covered her upper lip and brow. There was fear in her eyes, but something else, too.
“You’re excited,” I said, recognising that look. It was the same look I got just before linking with King.
“Of course I am.” She brushed aside her hair and met my stare. “For years I’ve studied every scrap, every word I could find on this city… on Him. People told me I was as mad as the cults I studied, that this was all nonsense. To see my theories confirmed, to know that my colleagues did not die in vain… Of course I’m excited. I’ve just seen my life’s work validated.”
Maks chuckled on the other side of the hold. “Let’s just hope you live long enough to enjoy it.” He tapped a chubby finger against his screen and nodded towards it. “You see.”
In the centre of the acropolis, beneath jagged spires that made my eyes hurt to look at, were the doors to a titanic vault. Covered in weeds and slime, innumerable markings had been etched onto the surface. The doors of the crypt seemed to distort as I stared at them, shifting from impossible shape to impossible shape. I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that no mortal hand had been responsible for their creation.
“It’s now or never, captain.” I felt the doctor grip my shoulder, and knew that she was right. If whatever was in there was allowed to get out, it’d be tickets for the lot of us.
“Maks, Kiyo, engage neural links on my say so.” I glanced at the screen one last time and thought I saw a flicker of eldritch light emanating from within the crypt, but it was gone before I could focus in on it.
Bonehead landed with a thunderous crunch upon the still-forming land mass. His thick pads cracked the tiles beneath him, and gouts of water sprayed from a crevice his one foot had caught in. He pulled it out with a satisfying pop and rose onto his hind legs to take in his surrounds.
For the first time—perhaps in Bonehead’s life—he found himself in a city built for a being of his size. He turned his head from side to side and sniffed the air. I knew that Maks would be working on gaining a foothold on Bonehead’s consciousness. It usually took a couple of seconds for the pilot to adjust, then it was game time.
“Ready to deploy, captain.” Kiyo’s voice sounded in my helmet, and I confirmed with a quick glance towards the digital relay in my visor.
“Activate Riptide,” I breathed into my mic. The leviathan haulers responded in an instant, releasing the fastenings that kept Kiyo’s kaiju airborne.
Riptide’s landing was more graceful than Bonehead’s, and she was already moving forward when the last of the plasma ropes fell from her side.
I monitored her progress for a second, noting how quickly Kiyo had her under control. She was getting faster than me. Then again, Riptide was far more docile than King, even if I’d never say as much to Kiyo.
“Ready to deploy,” came a voice through my helmet. One of the leviathan carrier pilots.
“Just a second,” I said as Riptide and Bonehead approached the monstrous portal, the supposed lair of the Enemy. It towered over even them, and seemed to shift and move, disrupting all known laws of matter, warping my perspective.
As Riptide got closer, I noticed that flicker of luminosity once again. It came from inside the vault, despite it still appearing to be sealed tight. I frowned and ran a heat scan of the crypt, but what came back was a garbled mess.
“Captain.” Claire crouched down beside my seat and nodded to the screen. “You must deploy now, there’s not much time.”
Even as she said the words, a bright beam of light of blinding intensity shot out from the crypt—or was it from the stars to the vault? I couldn’t tell. When I opened my eyes again, the light was gone, but a gaping black abyss stood where the sealed doors had once been. The darkness was so thick, so all-consuming, it almost had a material quality to it.
“There’s no time!” I felt Claire’s nails dig into my arm, and I smashed my hand on the activation seal without a second thought.
I fell to the ground with King. We landed on all fours, even as our consciousnesses danced around one another. He was always hesitant to accept me, to lose full autonomy. I didn’t blame him. Before we’d figured out how to break the synaptic control of whatever hive mind governed the kaiju, he’d been little more than a drone, carrying out the vicious desires of some other sentient body.
After a moment, King stopped pushing back, and I settled into the narrow mental corridor he’d provided for me. I could still see everything from my seat in the helicopter above, but another POV had been superimposed over my normal vision—the result of a superchip embedded in King’s skull that activated once I’d committed to neural linking.
King quickly moved through the strange city, unconcerned by the warped architecture and hexagonal structures that surrounded us. His clawed pads cut deep grooves into the green stone beneath us, and I could feel his triple tails flicking out behind us. This sunken city meant nothing to him, and I felt myself relax a little. Doctor Fern had spooked me—that much was true—but whatever lurked within the depths of R’lyeh had never fought kaiju before. Not like ours, anyway.
Riptide and Bonehead were still standing before the black portal, and they both turned at our arrival.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” I heard Kiyo’s voice in my ear.
“Smells like shit, too,” said Maks.
I let King’s senses roam, exerting my will only lightly as I stared into the cavity. Maks was right. The smell emanating from the gaping hole was intolerable, and I would have gagged had I not been hundreds of feet above, in the helicopter.
I felt King flinch as he picked up on a disturbance in that great cavernous pit. The kaiju tilted his saurian head and took a cautious step forward. I could hear it, too. A wet, sloshing sound coming from deep within the doorway. Bonehead and Riptide moved forward beside us, listening intently to the jarring slopping noise.
“It’s too late,” said Claire, her voice on the edge of panic. “We’ve left it too late. The seal is opened.”
“Look at the stars,” said Kiyo breathlessly.
I exerted my will over King, and he tilted his head towards the heavens. The sky had taken on a velvety red tinge, and I watched as a ripple of energy coursed from the furthermost constellations to those directly above us. It wavered for a moment, hovering just above our heads, and then shot straight down toward the open tomb, a coursing current pumping directly into that gaping maw.
The slopping noise came to an immediate halt, and was replaced by the sound of a thousand horns, blaring their distorted notes until I felt my eyes start to water and my ears bleed. The fanfare ended as abruptly as it had begun, and finally, the being it heralded began to emerge.
I felt an alien consciousness brush against my own, something so vast and loathsome that I nearly decoupled from King. As it was, King’s own immense consciousness acted as a buffer, and saved me from what could only be madness.
Maks and Kiyo were in similar positions, and I heard Kiyo cry out as the Dread Lord finally emerged from his vault.
A flabby claw gripped the edge of the crypt, and the masonry cracked beneath it. Another claw appeared, dragging itself across the chipped stone as the immensity within pulled itself from the tomb. A sickly green form, an accursed shape, squeezed itself out from the black doorway and onto the slimy flagstones of R’lyeh.
Though vaguely anthropoidal in shape, the being’s massive head was not unlike that of a cephalopod, with rubbery feelers and scaly, amphibian skin. The outline of the thing seemed to flicker as I stared at it, shifting between our reality and another, imposing itself on our cosmos. I was immediately reminded of the carving Claire had shown us during her briefing, and realised the being depicted was the very same.
The creature lumbered forward, and I saw that two bony wings jutted out from behind its back. It towered over us, standing at nearly double Bonehead’s height, and was at least a third taller than King. There was something about the way it moved that hinted at a great density, like that of a star compressed into a living form.
“No bigger than a class 3,” I said into my headset, trying my best to hold my nerve. “We’ve dealt with worse.” Even as I spoke the words, I knew them to be false. I could feel my mind starting to fray, and chattering, gibbering voices tugged at the tattered ends of my consciousness. I tried to drown them out, focusing instead on reining King in. The presence of that thing had stirred something within the kaiju, and he was champing at the bit. “Kiyo, give him a barrage, will you? Let’s see what this thing is made of.”
A green light flashed in the top-left corner of my visor as Kiyo confirmed, and a moment later Riptide was on the move. Her pilot led her past the crumbled remains of a spire until she stood directly in front of the thing from the star-vault.
It was only then that Cthulhu appeared to notice our presence at all. Two black eyes, as deep and old as the universe itself, stared down at Riptide. I saw a spike in Kiyo’s vitals—her heart rate was peaking. “Kiyo.” I turned in my seat and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She was sweating profusely, her eyes fixed before her. She was staring right into its gaze.
Somehow she managed to jerk out of whatever trance held her, and she nodded towards me curtly, before dedicating herself to controlling Riptide. “Volley fire,” she confirmed.
Two cylindrical organic pipes emerged from Riptide’s chest, already glowing red from the heat the kaiju was generating. The air around them crackled and started to blur as energy was channelled towards the bio-weapons.
“That’ll pump him,” Maks chortled. Bonehead was already moving in, ready to follow up on the vicious volley Riptide was about to deliver. We’d repeated this manoeuvre countless times, to devastating effect. Riptide would open up on any Emergence with a salvo, while Bonehead and King moved in to finish off anything that managed to survive.
Riptide dug her heels into the concrete beneath her and opened up her chest just as Cthulhu started to move towards her. Two gouts of burning-hot plasma shot out at the Dread Lord, melting stone and sand as it raced towards their target. A blinding flash followed, and I turned away from the screen, blinking rapidly.
“Again,” I said, trying to catch a glimpse of what remained beneath the smoke. Bonehead was pounding forward, cutting great grooves into the green stones as he moved in.
Riptide started drawing in the energy needed for another shot, allowing the already superheated cylinders no time to cool.
“Quickly.” I squinted into the cloud of dust and ash particles. There was a flicker of movement, and then a shadow shifted. A great, oozing green appendage emerged from the billowing cloud, and then the Dread Lord stepped forward. Though the plasma had hit him head on, he appeared unscathed by the barrage. I’d seen similar volleys tear open class 3s and cripple at least a few class 4s, but they’d done nothing to him.
The looming figure ignored Riptide and turned to face the charging Bonehead, lifting its gigantic limbs to tackle the kaiju head-on. I heard Maks’ roar through my headset, and watched as Bonehead switched to all fours.
The kaiju slammed into Cthulhu with a crunch, nearly lifting him from his feet, pushing him across the flagstones. But the thing from the vault was not to be undone so easily, and it quickly found its balance. It shifted against Bonehead’s weight, grappling with him for control, until he managed to get an arm around Bonehead’s fortified skull. The crypt creature dragged a malefic talon across the kaiju’s back, tearing through flesh and bone like it was nothing, and I watched as Maks’ ward struggled to get out of the thing’s grip.
“Again!” I shouted, turning to Kiyo.
“But, Bonehead…He’s in the way.”
“Get him out of there, Maks. Kiyo, take the shot!”
I prompted King forward, releasing the brakes and letting his instincts take over. Bonehead managed to get out of the headlock just as Riptide launched another volley. The barrel-chested kaiju rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the scolding-hot torrents of supercharged energy. Another cloud of ash and magnetic energy formed, but this time Cthulhu did not wait for it to clear before making his move.
The Dread Lord seemed to materialise out of nothingness behind Bonehead. The cephalopod limbs on its face whipped out like tentacles, attaching themselves to the kaiju’s neck and wrapping around his face before he could get out of the way. I heard Maks grunt as the creature began to exert pressure on Bonehead’s skull, clenching tighter and tighter.
King broke out into a run, sensing the danger, but it was too late. With a sickening crunch, Cthulhu crushed Bonehead’s skull and let his lifeless body fall to the floor.
Maks’ anguished screams pierced through the neural link, an explosion of hurt and anger that threatened to knock the connection between me and King. I could feel him bucking in his seat beside Kiyo, and it was only when one of our support staff tranquilised him that the screams subsided.
King drew up alongside Riptide and watched as the Dread Lord moved away from Bonehead’s carcass, trudging slowly through the towering buildings. It seemed unconcerned by the presence of the other two kaiju. Why shouldn’t it be? It’d just crushed the skull of the most resilient of the trio like it was made from paper.
King bristled at the lack of respect, and I felt my control on him lessen as anger pulsed through his veins. Riptide was already lining up for another shot, and I heard Kiyo urging her on to greater strengths.
I felt the same confusion King felt as the great being turned away from us, instead making its way toward the sea.
“You cannot let Him get away.” I heard Claire’s voice shrill in my ear, and I nodded. Whatever happened, we couldn’t let this thing get off the island. It would sweep across the world like a rotten tide, leaving nothing but chaos in its wake.
“That Bumblebee operational?” I turned in my seat to stare at the doctor. Her thin brows knitted together, and she nodded.
“Good,” I said, flicking back to King’s POV. We’ll keep him on the island as long as we can. Blast this place to hell.”
It’d take a few minutes for Claire to get authorisation, and then another minute or so for the thermobaric missile to be launched. But once it was, it’d arrive in seconds.
“We’ve got to hold him,” I said, signalling to Kiyo through my visor. “For at least a few minutes, but as long as we can.” We’d come to kill him, and it had taken hardly a few minutes for us to realise we never stood a chance.
King started moving through the buildings, barrelling through the grotesque stone structures as he built up momentum. The being from the vault was a couple hundred metres away, already on the outskirts of the sunken city. It wouldn’t be long before he reached the muddy shoreline and disappeared forever.
“Light him up.” I blinked a confirmation into my visor, and watched from above as Riptide commenced one final barrage. Her aim was true, and dual beams of plasma scorched a path across the ruins, smashing into Cthulhu’s exposed back. The Dread Lord stumbled forward, extending a claw to try and maintain its balance, but then King was on him.
The kaiju bellowed out in rage as it connected with its target, slamming the bulbous growths on its shoulders into the thing’s side. Cthulhu staggered, still recovering from the force of Riptide’s plasma volley.
Still maintaining his grip on Cthulhu’s midriff, King dropped a fused arm, clamped down on the Dread Lord’s exposed leg, and heaved. There was a moment where nothing happened, and it looked like the thing would recover its balance entirely. Then, with a colossal groan, the Dread Lord fell.
King stayed on him, even as they tumbled, pressing home the advantage. He slammed a clawed fist into Cthulhu’s side and swiped away the tentacles that tried to grip onto his face. The two titans collapsed against a sprawling temple, no doubt the home of some fell pantheon, leaving ruin and rubble in their wake.
When the dust settled, King was sat upon the Dread Lord, digging his massive claws into the creature’s neck and chest. Ichor spurted from the wounds, drenching the kaiju in a sickly lather. Cthulhu bucked beneath him, but still he clung on.
“So, it can be hurt.” I tagged Kiyo with my visor relay. “See if you can’t help King keep that thing down, maybe drop some plasma down its throat.”
Riptide responded instantly, loping through the wreckage of the dread city as she made her way to the battle. If they could just hold him in place for another minute or two…
A spike on King’s monitor drew my eyes back to the fight, and I found myself smiling. The kaiju had managed to get both its legs over Cthulhu’s midriff, and was holding down his head with a fused limb. Despite the crypt thing’s size advantage, he didn’t seem able to get out from the hold.
King brought his head closer to the Dread Lord’s, snapping at any of the appendages that tried to attach themselves to him. A sickly, bioluminescent glow shone from out of his mouth, and venom dripped onto the cephalopod face beneath him. I thought I heard a hiss of pain coming from the thing’s mouth, but I couldn’t be sure.
The glow grew, until a yellow orb of putrescent light oozed out from between King’s teeth, bathing the area around them in an eerie tinge. Cthulhu lashed out beneath him, intensifying his efforts to break out of the kaiju’s hold, but it was in vain. King’s grip would not be broken.
With a bestial roar, King unleashed a torrent of bio-toxins directly into the Dread Lord’s face. Hundreds of gallons of poisonous, gelatinous liquid washed over him, covering his eyes and mouth, entering every crevice and hole it could find. Steam rose from Cthulhu’s rubbery flesh, and I saw his tentacles try to retreat from the poison, before his entire face was hidden beneath King’s toxic spew.
The kaiju vomited out a final spray of bio-toxin and stared down into the bubbling swamp that now covered the Dread Lord’s face. Nothing could survive that, I was certain. It didn’t matter what dimension you came from, or how many worshippers you had, taking King’s ‘kiss’ directly in the face was a death sentence, even for a ‘god’. But I was wrong.
The air around Cthulhu shimmered and distorted, even as the venomous spray evaporated or seeped into the ground beneath him. King tilted his head, and I felt his uncertainty across the neural link.
Before King could make another move, the Dread Lord’s massive paw shot out from the ground and wrapped itself around his neck. The kaiju tried to claw it away, angling his razor-sharp mandible horns downward to cut at the flesh. His triple tails flashed behind him, slicing through the air to pierce Cthulhu’s arms and face.
The Dread Lord shifted beneath King, leaning his body against his other arm as he lifted himself from the ground. His modest wings angled out behind him, fluttering as they added power to his movements. I managed to catch a glimpse of his face as he rose. King’s attack had left it a smoldering wreck of boiling blisters and scarred flesh. Many of the tentacle-like tendrils had been fused together or burnt away entirely, leaving black-stained flesh in their place.
King sliced down with one of his tails, cutting into Cthulhu’s ruined face, but the Dread Lord was ready for it, and a clawed hand caught the tail before King could recover.
“Get in there!” I shouted into my headset with a glance at Kiyo.”
Cthulhu now had King by the neck and tail, and was starting to pull. I had no idea if he had the strength to tear the kaiju apart, but after seeing what he’d done to Bonehead, I didn’t want to wait to find out.
Super-heated plasma heralded Riptide’s arrival, slamming against the arm that held King’s tail. Cthulhu’s grip slackened long enough for King to pull his tail away, and the kaiju put all his strength behind getting out of the Dread Lord’s vice-like grip.
Riptide swung around from the other side and held onto the thing’s other arm, preventing it from doubling down on its hold on King. With the strength of two kaijus on him, Cthulhu finally relinquished his grasp, letting King slip out from between his claws.
The kaiju rolled back on his heels, pushing himself away from the Dread Lord, while Riptide did the same from the other side.
“It’s face,” said Kiyo, almost too soft for me to hear. “It’s healing.”
I stared hard at the screen, and then waited for King to get a better look. Kiyo was right. The charred mess of flesh that made up Cthulhu’s face was repairing itself, knitting back together the scarred flesh, even as we watched. The cuts on its chest had already disappeared, and any sign that it had ever been hurt was gone.
“We can’t win this.” I shook my head and took a deep breath. I didn’t even know if the Bumblebee would make a difference—if there was even a point delaying the inevitable.
“It’s not coming.” I felt Claire’s hand on my shoulder. “They won’t authorise the strike. Something has gone wrong.”
“What do you mean?” I nearly pulled my helmet off, and felt a bit of King’s anger course through my veins. “Tell them to fire the damn missile. We need to kill this thing here and now.”
Claire shook her head, a tired look in her eyes. They spoke of resignation, of failure. “It’s the cult. I think they’ve somehow managed to infiltrate the facility. We’re on our own.”
I swore. “Then we’re done for.”
Below us, the Dread Lord waded forward, seeming to grow in size and stature as our last hope was dashed. I could feel that gibbering madness again—just on the edge of hearing—and I recoiled as the lumbering behemoth turned its gaze towards our helicopter.
I knew then and there that there was no God. That this titan from the stars, and the gibbering voices, were more real than any belief I’d ever held. I wanted to laugh and scream at the realisation, but something anchored me to my sanity.
I looked down and saw that King was still circling the Dread Lord—was still willing to engage, despite the impossibility of the task. Riptide, too. Perhaps they sensed the apocalyptic nature of the being they faced. Perhaps they didn’t want to lose the first home they’d found—not without a fight.
I wasn’t going to get in their way.
“Decoupling from King.” I moved my hand over the deactivation seal and nodded to Kiyo. “Let’s see what they can do without a leash.”
I pressed the button and felt the pressure lift immediately. King noticed it, too, and rolled his massive shoulders as he adjusted. Kiyo followed my lead, closing the neural link with Riptide. She exhaled heavily beside me and removed her helmet.
“Now what?”
I shrugged. “The law of the jungle prevails. They’ve got a better chance without us slowing them down, and it’s not like we need to stop them from destroying this place. It can go to hell for all I care.”
My second nodded and focused back on her screen. “The law of the jungle, then.”
Down below, King bellowed out a challenge and slammed a meaty fist against the ground. He moved onto all fours, keeping his body close to the shattered tiles beneath him. Riptide was already generating the energy required for another shot. This time, however, she was moving in step with the other kaiju.
Cthulhu stretched out his wings and broke out into a loping run. With each stride he took, the wings flapped gracelessly behind him, but he picked up speed at a remarkable pace.
The colossal titans met with a scream of tearing flesh and broken bones. Riptide unleashed her load on the Dread Lord the moment before they collided, while King slammed upwards at the last second, trying to skewer Cthulhu with his horns.
The thing shrugged off the plasma and smashed a fist into King’s face, halting the charge in its steps. Riptide crashed in a moment later, swinging her fused arms at the Dread Lord’s face, forcing him off the other kaiju. She was lighter than King, but she was fast, and managed to pull back before Cthulhu could hook onto her with his feelers.
King shook off the blow and reared up onto his haunches. His barbed tails shot out with blinding speed, and I heard the Dread Lord groan as his stomach was punctured by the blades, his arms floundering as they tried to block the strikes.
Riptide swung in again, lashing out with her own tail as she tried to flank her prey, while King moved in the opposite direction. The two kaiju began to circle Cthulhu.
“Is it just me, or does he look a little slower?” Kiyo shifted on her seat and tilted her head as she watched the fight play out.
The Dread Lord trudged forward, clumsily blocking another attack from King, but opening up his side to Riptide, who didn’t wait for a second invitation. She knocked aside his arm with her shoulder and sunk her teeth deep into his belly, tearing flesh from him. The kaiju spat it out on the ground as she retreated, before the Dread Lord could respond.
The thing let out an ear-splitting bellow and held a clawed paw to its side, turning its great head from kaiju to kaiju.
Kiyo was right. He was slower, more lethargic than he’d been when he first emerged.
“The stars,” said Claire. She pulled herself towards the helicopter door and stared out into the inky black sky. “They’re changing again.”
I glanced out the nearest window and saw that she was right. The red tinge had disappeared, and the heavens no longer felt like they were about to fall on our heads. Though far from normal, they were starting to resemble something less foreboding.
King sprung forward again, sensing weakness, and slammed a shoulder into the side Cthulhu was favouring. The Dread Lord stumbled back, lashing out with a talon, landing a glancing blow on the kaiju’s head, but the impetus was gone and King shrugged it off.
Riptide darted in, narrowly avoiding a swipe from Cthulhu, and sprayed a torrent of plasma at the Dread Lord’s chest. The thing stumbled back, nearly collapsing against the side of a monolithic building, but somehow managed to retain its balance. The other kaiju bounded in, spewing his vile, luminous sludge across the Olde One’s leg, before snapping at the hand that tried to push him away.
The Dread Lord howled as the bio-toxins burnt through his flesh, leaving tumorous welts in their wake. He took a step back, and then another as the kaiju circled him like sharks in open water.
“They’re herding him back to the vault,” said Claire, glancing at me from the helicopter door.
With each step, King and Riptide were forcing the Olde One back into the city. I don’t know if they thought they could force the Dread Lord back into his tomb, or if it was just instinctual, but it was working.
The Olde One ducked beneath a flurry of King’s strikes and kicked him back with a massive foot, before weaving out of the way of another plasma volley. He’d grown even slower, and the high-density plasma shot knocked him on the shoulder, flinging him back against another ruin.
Cthulhu howled his defiance and clambered back to his feet. His movements were unbalanced and tired, and he barely managed to pull himself upright.
Perhaps sensing the change, he stared up into the sky and watched as the stars that had brought him forth slunk back into the abyss of night. He let out a single, mournful bellow and then turned his back on the kaiju, before walking back of his own accord towards the vault.
“What is he doing?” Asked Kiyo.
I shrugged and turned to the doctor.
“The stars aren’t right,” she said, taking off her glasses and wiping away the sweat from her brow. “It is not His time.”
I raised a brow, but nodded anyway. Whatever the reason, Cthulhu was making his way back through the city. He barely attempted to fend off King when next he struck, and the massive kaiju bit off great clumps of the Olde One’s flesh.
Riptide slammed into his back, tearing into his exposed wings and flesh with tooth and claw. The Dread Lord ignored her and continued his march towards his crypt, picking up speed as he did so, despite her added weight.
When the vault finally appeared, Cthulhu’s flesh was torn through in a dozen places, and great gashes had formed all along his head and sides. King and Riptide backed off, content to watch as the Dread Lord limped across the flagstones towards the gaping black hole. His body’s regeneration had slowed, and the wounds that covered him festered and bled across the tiles beneath him.
When he reached the vault, the Dread Lord placed a hand on the slimy stone door and stared up at us. I felt the whispering voices, the soft hysteria of madness as it brushed against my mind. I heard the gibbered chants of beings I hoped never to encounter, and saw the Dread Citadel reflected in his eyes, a place of eldritch light and sickening despair. And then it was gone.
The Olde One squeezed his girth between the stone doors and pushed himself into the great chasm that lay at the centre of R’lyeh. The last thing I saw of him was the flick of his great tail, just before the doors to the vault closed shut behind him, sealing him in his tomb even as the sea began to reclaim the lost city once more.
Perhaps King and Riptide wore down that thing from the vault, beating it into submission until finally it was forced to concede defeat and return to the black hole from whence it came. Maybe, there in that dark crypt, the creature died from its wounds. That’s what I like to think anyway—that our kaijus beat down on a cosmic being beyond our comprehension and punished it for its hubris. But maybe Claire’s theory is correct and the stars weren’t right. Perhaps, one day, the Dread Lord Cthulhu will rise again and bring forth an age of madness and unspeakable horror. Maybe, when the stars are right, He will come back to conquer our world, His emergence heralding a reign of darkness that will last for all eternity and scar the minds of all those who live to see it come to pass.
I plan on being long dead before that ever happens.