Corner
Loki vs Cthulhu, Battle Start!
Dee has this stuffed toy; Sigmund and Wayne bought it for her one birthday, long before I knew any of them. It's of Cthulhu; you know, the Great Old One? Invention of modern horror master H. P. Lovecraft, raper of schoolgirls, destroyer of minds, all-round incomprehensible evil. I'm sure you've seen the dolls, too. They're big on the internet, trust me; about a foot long, cute little plushie wings, tentacles filled with beans to make them hang properly, fork-like three-clawed tentacles. Dee's one is black and silver, the goth version. Very fitting, very adorable.
The thing that's currently pawing its way through the waves a hundred feet below me is in no way, shape or form adorable. It's barely even recognizable as a hand -- more like an abortion of oily black claws and rubbery, pustule-covered skin -- and the only reason I think it is is because it's definatley not a tentacle, and I can see at least three of those writhing around as well. And and eye; Christ the eye is the worst thing of all. Barely visible under the churning seawater, nevertheless it burns with alien indifference, casting a sick yellow-white glow to a patch of water the size of a swimming pool.
I'm not nearly far enough away; not by a thousand miles. Not by a thousand years. As it is, all that separates me from the greatest evil ever concocted by man is a couple of hundred feet and a torrent of rain. I'm fucking grateful for the storm, too, because if what I've heard is true, water traps this thing. It certainly looks like it does, the way the few indistinct appendages I can see seem to be struggling against the ocean. Truth be told, water's not great for me, either. I hope that's doesn't become a problem. I'm here to fight Cthulhu, you see.
Yeah, I don't fucking know either.
A tentacle the thickness of a passenger jet suddenly breaks free of the ocean and flails laboriously in my direction. I'm glad of that; Cthulhu is big but apparently it's slow, too, in the way humans are slow compared to cockroaches. I take the initiative while it's there, and lunge for the thing, blade in hand. It hits the blubber with a meaty thwack and suddenly the ocean seems a lot closer than it used to. The blade is stuck. The blade is stuck and nothing I do can pull it from the putrid, sea-bloated blubber. And nothing I can do can sway the path of the tentacle from its slow crash back into the ocean. I'm strong, but Cthulhu is a force of nature.
I let go, fast enough to avoid hitting the water but not fast enough to escape the tsunami waves that spray up in its wake. They hit me with the force of a brick wall and next thing I know I'm plunging through the churning black water. Beneath me, around me, as far as I can see the water churns. The books always describe Cthulhu as a kind of anthropomorphic octopus-bat-thing. It isn't. It isn't even close to looking like that, and not even my mind can full wrap a form around the twisting I can currently see in the water.
I'm not used to this. I'm not used to being useless; because that's what I am, here. Tiny and useless against the massive, corrupted bulk that is currently trying to free itself from the ocean below me. I let myself sink; useless...
... my feet hit something solid. Solid but... not quite, and with horror I look down and realize I'm standing dead in the centre of one of the thing's unfathomable eyes. Cthulhu doesn't notice; just like it doesn't notice the tiny blade still lodged in one of its tentacles; a splinter, a mote.
There's something wrong about the eye...
(... r'lyeh wgan'nagl fhtagn...)
... and that's important. That's deadly important.
I'm not built for swimming but I try it anyway, fighting against the currently and dodging flailing appendages as I circle the massive glow, thinking... something...
(... ph'nglui mglyw'nafh...)
(... strange aeons...
Fuck I've read these books. I own them, I can see where they are on my bookshelf -- some of them first prints from magazines and chapbooks... what am I forgetting?
There's definatley something wrong with the eye. It's huge and glowing and the pupil is lobed like I've never seen on anything sane but it seems... distant somehow. The insane colours muted oddly. It moves, too; not constantly but every now and again, thrashing back and forth madly in a way that doesn't seem to relate to any of the other thrashing done by any other part of its vast bulk. For whatever that's worth. In fact, the odd thing is that the twitching is almost the most human thing about it. It looks almost like...
(that is not dead which can eternal lie...)
... almost like its sleeping. REM sleep. That's important, and suddenly it hits me why; Cthulhu is dead, dead and asleep. Even now as it thrashes against the ocean it's still asleep.
I know what I have to do.
I break the surface of the water like a torpedo, hurtling up into the sky, eyes madly dashing across the wreckage of the storm. This used to be a deep sea oil drilling platform; the drilling was what work Cthulhu up, near as anyone can tell. Now all that's left of the place is a grotesquely glimmering oil slick and a forest of twisted metal. The whole place is a massive lightning rod in this atmosphere, and all my fur bristles out as I get close, crackling with ozone and static.
Eventually, I spy what I need amongst the debris -- a long segment of old pipe -- and painfully wrench it out of the rest of the wreckage. It's comically big, and I'm comically small by comparison but, Cthulhu aside, I'm still the strongest thing in this bit of ocean and with a painful metallic shriek it finally pops free of its moorings. It's long enough. Just. I think.
"... this one's for you, brother."
Turning over awkwardly in the air I aim the pipe downwards... and drop. The ocean crashes as the pip enters and for a moment I'm terrified that the current is going to sweep it wrong--
(this is never going to work fucking stupid plan boy what were you)
-- but suddenly I'm up against something solid. Or near enough.
I push. It's hard with nothing to push against but simple physics never got in the way before, and soon I'm rewarded with a deep, sickening plop and a wave of inky black humor comes shooting out of the pipe. I've got nowhere to go, and my hands slip a little on the pole as the remains of Cthulhu's massive eye comes cascading down all over me.
Underneath, the monster doesn't even blink.
Calling up lightning was never my thing.
"Thor you dead bastard this one's all you!" I scream, pointlessly, at the sky. For a moment nothing happens and I just wind up looking a bit stupid -- not, realistically, that I think Cthulhu really cares -- but then I'm thrown backwards as all my muscles spazm at once, the sound of Mjollnir ringing in my hears, and I'm back in the water again, slightly singed but laughing like a mad thing.
The pipe does what it was supposed to do, acting as a wire to the lightning, right through the salty ocean and straight into the thing's ancient brain. Or whatever twisted bile passes for one.
Half a second later, I'm blinded by pain. It's ironic, really, since I'm reasonably sure the pain is coming from my ears; and my ears are picking up a scream. Cthulhu's scream, mad like the stars and twice as distant, and I know that it's awake. Finally, after so many aeons of sleep, Dead Cthulhu is awake. And if the couplet is right, that means it can die.
I'm swimming again, fast in the water like a monitor lizard, hurtling to where that massive eye suddenly seems to much brighter. The inky black lobes of the pupil contract sharply as I get closer, and I'm struck with a terrible, tangible force; a consciousness that span galaxies.
LITTLE THING, DARE YOU--.
I don't let it get to me, that voice that would reduce a man's mind to ichor. But I am not a man, and I'm back against the eye again -- the slick, sickening eye -- but this time I don't stop at the surface, instead dive deeper, breaching the already injured surface.
Cthulhu is around me and it is in me. Filth and bile and rotten flesh and liquefied muscle, I can feel it oozing inside me; inside my ears, inside my nose and -- when I laugh -- inside my mouth. It tastes like the bottom of the sea. It tastes like rotting dinosaurs, of the stink of sulfur in the deepest and most secret of the earth's crevices. I suck it down, drown myself in its disgusting, ancient power. There is so much; already I am gorged beyond full and I'm not even through the eye yet.
It is a monstrous feat, but I am an Eater.
Above the waves for the first time in eternity, Cthulhu screams its last, dying scream.
That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.