14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Noah
A hot spear of pain lanced through my leg while the rest of my body felt entombed in ice. Even in a body built to outlast human civilization, it seemed it was outmatched by this horned beast.
The creature’s grip on my ankle remained vice-tight with the toothy suckers digging into my flesh and dragging me toward the ocean floor.
It intended to drown me, and I waited for my lungs to fill with water and the cold dark to strangle me.
But death never came.
I could breathe the freezing salt water better than air and the chilly water closed in on me like a compression glove. Stabilizing and secure.
Unknown shapes rippled around me through frigid murk. More rock formations? Like the one that jutted above the surface where Bea was tucked safe away from the monster.
Fight harder. The disembodied voice in my mind roared to life. Your task is not complete.
There was no time to dissect the mask’s latest demand as the pale horror hurled me through the water, slamming me against the seabed. The solid stone cracked audibly from the collision, kicking up a cloud of debris blinding me to the monster’s next attack.
Out of the sediment, tentacles closed around me, cast wide like a net.
No time to react. The mutant animal’s beak snapped viciously, its tentacles drawing me toward the gnashing maw.
Digging my claws into its flesh, the water turned black with noxious blood. The ribbons I slashed seared hot, glowing gold just as my eyes that vaguely illuminated my way through the swirling debris.
I clung to it.
Oh, have you figured where you are on the food chain? You’re stuck on the ocean floor with me. I bellowed my thought into its tiny brain, pressing on it like a pimple.
The monster cringed away at my internal taunt. Could it hear me? I tried another psychic assault, this time imagining it in great pain. It thrashed and squeezed, confirming the theory burning my brain like a brand.
Of course.
This mask did more than alter my physical form to resemble Cthulhu.
It turned my own mind into a weapon.
Kill.
I wasn’t sure who said it—the mask or my own subconscious making sense of my new reality faster than the rest of my brain could. It didn’t matter.
The moment the word bloomed in my mind, the creature writhed in pain and more blood spurted into the water, casting us in total blackness.
Then with its last dying scream, it collapsed to the sea floor with a muffled thunk. Lifeless.
Well done, sailor, the mask congratulated me in my ear. But your task is not yet complete. Look at what I’ve brought you here to save.
As the blood and grime settled, the sunken world around me came into view.
Obsidian towers, as broad and tall as any man-made skyscraper, shot up from the rocky sea floor, twisted and contorted in strange formations. Glowing runes like the ones tattooed in my throat covered them—ancient accounts of a civilization long dead.
Not dead. Sleeping. The mask corrected. And it is you who will awaken us.
Awaken? And who was “us?”
A river of information flooded into me. In the darkness, I felt the pull of something too vast to know. It let me see, allowing my mind to sense all around me for miles, as if scouring the ocean floor in a huge psychic net.
The mental bond that drew me closer, and opened my eyes came from right here. Now, I could see why.
Shapes, larger even than the towers that littered this place.
There were many of them, like bodies scattered across a killing field.
Each one was as big as a mountain, vast enough that they displaced and dislocated these colossal towers like blades of grass.
Their forms were wildly different, some appearing as little more than an enormous fishy humanoid.
Others were far stranger, formless masses of flesh, tentacles and eyes.
In any case, no two were remotely the same.
It was the fifteen primary eldritch gods. Creatures with names I'd studied my whole life. My faith always kept me positive that these beings–or ones like them–existed, and were existential threats to humanity.
Corpses.
Dead. All of them.
When I read about them, I pictured these exact beings. But they were alive and brimming with power, swimming in the vast cosmic sea of space. Not dead. Not here. I thought only Cthulhu lay waiting for us here on earth.
As I swam closer, the runes around my throat burned out and the voices in my head grew so loud, I could barely think.
Those voices. It wasn’t just the one mask speaking to me. It was fifteen separate voices of the eldritch gods who lay here in this underwater graveyard for who knew how long.
Even though I knew these cold, motionless things had been here for eons, I heard their humming minds.
“What do you want from me?” I felt like I was whispering in a hurricane.
Suddenly the other voices faded away until only one remained. The loudest, most commanding of all.
By some dark magic, I knew it was Cthulhu who spoke to me, his voice rising inside my heart and filling me with a golden heat.
The eggs.
Reclaim them.
Place them inside the statue belonging to the mask you wear now. Then, find the others.
And repeat.
Frighten.
Feast.
Incubate.
All fifteen. Only then can We awaken.
I knew what I had to do. And I had a feeling, my little egg-filled mate was going to enjoy what came next.
***
Swimming up and out of the circular pool, I climbed onto the ledge and froze.
There she was.
My mate.
She looked so small laying there on the floor surrounded by fifteen statues, representing each of the cosmic gods I’d seen below.
Bea wore nothing but an old T-shirt of mine, which she’d pulled up over her hips.
Sweat beaded her brow, baby hairs clinging to her skin with her eyes clamped closed. Too caught up with finger-fucking herself, she hadn’t noticed my presence yet.
Gods below, she was perfect.
Breasts heaving. Legs bent and splayed to the sides. Wet with anticipation. Her hand stroked the crux between her thighs with reckless abandon.
The ball of heat burning low in my core had the sections of flesh curling back to reveal the beak beneath where my cock was already unfurling and pushing through.
Overcome with the need to impale my mate, I rose from the water, and purred into the psychic connection she didn’t yet realize was there.
I’ve come to retrieve what’s mine, little Bea.
She froze, her fingers still inside her. She sat up, eyes blowing wide with a combination of relief and awe.
Pleasure worked through me seeing just how happy she was to know I’d survived. Though, from her frantic thoughts, she was unsure how much of the man she knew and loved remained.
“You’re alive,” she rasped.
I purred my affirmation in her mind and her throat bobbed with a swallow.
“You’ve come for the eggs?”
I shook my head.
Damn the eggs. They were all Cthulhu cared about, but that’s not why I was out here on this expedition in the first place. I didn’t become a cultist of Cthulhu to Awaken him or the other eldritch gods.
First and foremost, I was here for her.
“I’ve come for you.”