Oasis

The lake wasn’t a mirage. A real oasis, amongst what had seemed an endless world of sand.

After suffering from thirst for so long, I didn’t exactly have much self-control when I saw it. I practically threw myself at the water, trying to grab as much as I could with each handful. Felt like I could drink the whole lake, and I’d still be thirsty.

But as I swallowed more water, I started noticing a metallic taste in it. Looked down at my hands in the water, and saw blood coming off them. Pulled them out, as blood continued ripping off them. There was no open wound anywhere on them, but the blood kept flowing from between my fingers. In a panic, I threw them back into the water, trying to get it off. It was a wasted effort; no matter how much I washed off, there was still more. The red spread through the lake, until the clear water had turned crimson.

At last, with the lake completely changed, the blood stopped. I wanted to recoil from the pool of blood that had replaced the oasis, but felt unable to pull my eyes away. The blood beneath my face began to whirl, and the color pulled away, creating an empty circle. The water in the circle wasn’t clear like before, but perfectly reflective, like a mirror. It was weird, seeing my face like that. Haven’t had the chance to look at it in a while. Almost didn’t recognize myself. Looked halfway like a corpse. Or maybe a skeleton held together by skin, blood, and dirt.

The water shifted again, and a new face was looking at me. For a split second, I thought it was Grendel. But no, this was a woman. I stared at it, trying to understand why it seemed so familiar. The realization struck as something of a surprise: it was me. Or, me if I was cleaned up and not starving to death. All my scars were gone on her, and she still had my suit and trench coat, but they were both completely black, with the only splash of color coming from a green tie. Her smile was filled with shark like teeth, and her two burning red eyes seemed to pierce through me. I moved my hand to where my right eye would be, and the reflection followed, but I still only felt my eye patch, and the empty socket beneath.

The reflection began to move on its own, lunging toward me. Before I could respond, its arms broke from beneath the water and grabbed around my waist, quickly pulling me under. I panicked, thinking I was going to drown, but when I fell through the lake, I wasn’t underwater. I was in a black void, without any sign of anything else around me.

Looked around for something in the emptiness, and finally a light appeared by me. Images flashed in it, showing me my life in reverse. All the things I’ve done. The mistakes I’ve made. The people I’ve killed. Every horrible decision. But when it got to the point where I became I-330, the images began to diverge from what I remember. The perspective was wrong; it wasn’t of me falling into the Quiet, but of me already inside, watching Lisa falling. Then the images went further back, into events I didn’t remember at all. I stood amongst a field of stars, and the Slender Man stood opposed to me. With a mere though, I pulled a star to me. A massive ball of fire, and I balanced it easily in the palm of my hand. With a wave, I threw the star at the Slender Man.

The images flashed further back, and I saw my worshippers flocking to the massive temples they had erected in my honor. Their numbers were uncountable, across millions of planets through the abyss of times. Humanity was barely a speck amongst them; a single species on a single planet that existed for only a heartbeat. It amused me to see all the tribute gathered for me. They believed they could avoid my wrath with such gifts. But it was my boredom, not my anger, that they should have feared. They were like flies to me, and they existed so I could pull their wings off. I raised a species of dumb animals to intelligence, then stole their sentience away at the height of their empire. Another race I granted immensely powerful weapons, then laughed as they destroyed themselves. All of reality was my toy. All existed for my amusement.

Further back. There were no starts of planets here. Nothing but the unmolded chaos of Azathoth’s dreams. I could feel the presence of Yog-Sothoth and Sub-Nigurtath, but I didn’t care about them. They were just mindless monsters. No entertainment to be gained from them. And then, the images stopped. I was back in the blackness beneath the lake. But now, someone else was there with me. A tall, proud looking man with dark skin, black eyes, and a golden crown. Recognized him as the Pharaoh I’d seen in R’lyeh.

His voice was softer this time, but it still had that sense of earth shaking authority behind every word. “I suppose it would be too much to expect you would experience a revelation from what you saw.”

“…Alright what the fuck is going on here. Didn’t I kill you or something already?”

“From a certain perspective, yes. Although a better phrase would be that you inherited me.”

Tried to remember back to what had happened. Hadn’t been in my best state of mind when I fought Grendel on R’lyeh. What with the sword through my stomach. “You’re… Nyarlathotep?”

“No.” I blinked, and his appearance changed into the same as the reflection I’d seen in the lake. It spoke again, now with my voice. “You are Nyarlathotep. You really need to stop treating me as a separate entity from yourself.”

“What? I’m not… I know I’m, well, kinda like the spawn of Nyarlathotep or something like that. I’ve had enough Fears telling it to me for it to be drilled into my head.”

“Really? Because you were very quick to accuse me of being Nyarlathotep.”

“Well, you’re, like, I don’t know, the mental incarnation of him or something? The source of those whispers I’ve been hearing or something?”

“No.” I blinked again, and she was gone. But I could still hear her voice. “There is no ‘incarnation’ of Nyarlathotep in your head. Nyarlathotep does not have some kind of separate presence in your mind. You never heard any whispers. There has only ever been one voice in your head. Yours.”

Looked around, trying to find some source of that voice. I wanted it to be coming from outside. Wanted it to be from anywhere but my own head. It wasn’t.

“You’ve gone to such amazing lengths to deny your identity, and treat everything relating to Nyarlathotep as though it was an outside force. Calling your own thoughts ‘voices’. Claiming you don’t know how you kept getting greater control over your abilities. Treating recalling memories as information being put in your head. You are so determined to portray yourself as a human who just happens to have weird things happen to her, in spite of the fact that you aren’t human at all. You never have been.”

“No, I’m… I….” Kept thinking back to the images I’d seen, of the god who toyed with the universe. Who would lead billions to their death just for a quick laugh. “I’m not that. I’m nothing like that.”

“Maybe not. But you were. And you will be again, if you want the power to defeat the Slender Man.”

“No! Stop… why are you trying so hard to convince me?”

“I’m not.” Blinked again, and a mirror was in front of me. This time, the reflection wasn’t changed; it looked exactly like me. “I am you. You’re already partially convinced. You just need to stop this pointless internal conflict, and you can finally start getting some real progress done.”

This conversation was rapidly approaching my tolerance level for smug people telling me what to do. So I smashed the mirror. The moment it shattered, the void was gone, and I was underwater. Took a few moments to get myself oriented, until I saw a light above me. Swam towards it, until I came out in the middle of the oasis.

There’d been some changes since I fell into the lake. My suit and coat are back, but they’re black, like the reflection’s had been. Don’t feel hungry or thirsty anymore, and I look much healthier. Still have all those scars.

And much to my surprise, in the time I was gone, the Slender Man’s tree had grown on the horizon. Knew I would need to run again. But not the panicked flight I’d done previously. New knowledge, or memories, or whatever they were, were bubbling to the surface of my mind. I couldn’t fight against the Slender Man. But maybe I could slow it down.

The shadows of my left arm started to shift until chaotic shapes, until it only resembled an arm in that it was a limb attached to my body. They tore through the air in front of me, and the space shattered like glass, leaving a tear of nothingness. Cracks spread from that nothingness, causing more of the space to vanish, rapidly consuming the entire desert. As this universe fell apart, I could feel others like it close by. I grabbed onto one, and pulled myself into it.

Another wasteland. But this time, a wasteland of snow.

Let’s see what I can find here.

The Garden of Desolation

So. A desert. A really really big desert. After the freakiness of the last place, this is a little boring. You’ve seen one sand dune, you’ve seen them all.

The lack of any landmarks makes it difficult to be certain, but this place feels familiar. It reminds me of the desert I saw in my dream when I spoke with the Mother of Snakes. But now that the Mother’s dead, it would be hard to confirm if they’re the same place.

Not really sure what to do here. I suppose I could start walking, but I wouldn’t know where I’m walking to. Beats standing here and doing nothing, though.

***

I think it’s been three hours since I last wrote. Yeah, I’m gonna go with three hours.

Still no sign of anything. Walking in this place is horrible. The heat never stops beating down on me; I’ve discarded my trench coat and suit jacket, but that hasn’t helped even slightly. There’s no shade, and judging by the lack of a sun, I doubt there’ll be any night. Nothing but a lot of sand and that stupid heat.

***

I’m thirsty. I’m genuinely thirsty. I have felt this since… well, since I was… human. I’d almost forgotten what the sensation was like. But something but something about this place makes my throat feel parched, and has me craving for a drink. No chance of finding a water fountain here, though.

***

Wasn’t that long ago I thought that I wanted to get the chance to pause and reflect on what I’m doing. Now I’ve got the chance, and I wish I had something else to do instead.

What the hell was I thinking? How did we think I could beat the Slender Man? Everything I’ve done, I’ve fucked up. The only things I ever seem to succeed at is controlling the damage of my mistakes, and even that I screw up.

Maybe it’s for the best that I’m lost here. I can’t ruin anything here.

***

Now I’m hungry. That’s a feeling I definitely didn’t miss. Why the hell is this happening? What kind of place is this?

***

I’m going to fucking murder whichever Fear this desert belongs to. If it’s the Mother of Snakes I will fucking find a way to bring her back from the dead so I can stab her in the god damn face over and over until her head is nothing but a bloody mess!

Who do these Fears think I am? They think they can toy with me? I. Will. Kill them. Every last one.

***

Thought I saw Lisa in the distance. Considering I’m not an idiot, I realized it was just a mirage caused by the heat and this feeling of dehydration, and that I shouldn’t waste my time with it.

Of course, I had to be safe, so I checked anyway.

I was right. It was a mirage.

***

I fucking hate sand.

***

Yeah 330, let’s just go on a magical journey to rip the fabric of the multiverse apart! I can’t see how that could possibly backfire and end up in us being trapped forever inside a magical desert world!

I was better off back when I just focused on fighting Grendel.

Or maybe not, because his whole plan relied on me ripping apart the multiverse. So really the best course of action I could have taken would have been to stay in bed. Forever.

***

Wasn’t the Slender Man hunting me or something? I wish he’d show up. Then he could just kill me.

Or maybe I’d kill him. I wonder if he bleeds?
God I’m thirsty.

***

Okay. We can get through this, 330. We just need to… need to figure out how to extract moisture from the air. Yeah. Genius idea, 330. That’s totally something that is doable. Can’t be too hard.

Fucking hell I don’t even know what I’m writing anymore.

***

Looks like a lake up ahead. Probably another mirage. Going to go check it out, because why the hell not.

The Screaming Tower

The Wooden Girl is a bitch.
And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

***

It was only moments after writing how suspicious the open gate was that I-330 decided to enter the castle. Without hesitation, she strode forward. When her foot crossed the threshold, instead of entering the gardens which she had seen from outside the walls, she was indoors. It was a circular tower, with red and black checkered floors and a gilded spiral staircase stretching up higher than I-330 could see. When she looked back, there was no sign of any doorway or gate that she had come through. The walls of the tower were perfectly smooth stone, without any openings. Yet even without any windows or sources of light, the interior was completely illuminated.

Cautiously, I-330 went to the stairs and began to walk up them. After some time, she started to wish that she had counted steps, because there was no way to tell how far she had traveled. When she looked down, she couldn’t see the floor anymore, but when looking up there still didn’t seem to be any end.

As she came up one step, a pathway made of gilded metal extended from the stairs, reaching towards an ivory door. Once again, the invitation seemed suspicious, but I-330’s curiosity overrode any doubts. She went through the door, and found herself in the back of a grand theater. The rows were filled with audience members, all focused on the stage with grins fixed on their faces. The play being performed was a domestic comedy, featuring slapstick quarrels between the bumbling husband and his wife. I-330 watched with more than a little confusion at the performance. The acting was stiff, more like a puppet show than a theater. But in spite of the show’s poor quality, the audience laughed mechanically at each joke.

At one point in the play, the wife responded to her husband’s blunder by hitting him over the head with a rolling pin, causing the pin to snap in two. The audience burst into laughter, and continued laughing as she kept hitting him. Even as his skull started to cave in, and blood splattered across the stage, the laughter didn’t stop.

I-330 ran out of the theater, back onto the staircase. She had come to the conclusion that this was “a seriously fucked up place,” and leaving should be her first priority.

But when she tried running down the stairs, instead of descending through the tower, she continued to go higher. When she tried running the opposite direction it had the same result. No matter where she went on the stairs, she kept getting closer to the top. Until, without any indication that it was coming, the stairs stopped. At the end was another door, made of black wood. After her experience with the last door, I-330 quickly came to the decision to not go through this one. She turned to leave, only to find that the stairs had disappeared, leaving instead a massive drop that stretched all the way down to the bottom of the tower. The only path open was through that door.

Before going through, I-330 turned her shadow arm into a blade. At the very least, she could be prepared to fight. With painfully slow caution, she cracked the door open, and peeked inside. The room beyond had the same red and black checker tile as the bottom of the tower. The walls were covered in shelves of porcelain dolls, and in the center was a table, set for tea. Seeing no one inside, I-330 entered the room, and walked to the table. It had a distinctly Victorian appearance, with a lace trimmed tablecloth and elegantly crafted china.

I-330 reached for a cup, and the moment her hand touched it, deafening laughter came from the dolls on the shelves. I-330 turned to run for the door, but standing between her and the exit was the Wooden Girl. Before I-330 could fight, strings fell from above, wrapping around her limbs.

The dolls stopped laughing, and the Wooden Girl raised its arms up. “Yes! I did it!” It started skipping around I-330, giggling as it spoke. “All this time I’ve been trying so hard to get you, when I just needed to open the front door and let you walk in!” It skipped up to I-330 and grabbed her jaw. “Now, you belong to me.” The Wooden Girl forced I-330’s mouth open, then stuck a hand inside. I-330 felt strings flowing down her throat, into the rest of her body.

“This is… the heart. Let’s try stopping that.” The Wooden Girl said, and I-330 felt like her chest was about to burst. “Aaaaand start it again.” The pain vanished. “And here’s the lungs….” I-330 started choking, unable to draw in breath. “Alright, enough of that.” The Wooden Girl pulled its hand out, and I-330 could breathe again. “Oh, don’t glare at me like that.” It said. “You’re my pet now. Put on a smile.” Against her will, I-330 felt her lips turning up into a grin. “Muuuuch better.”

The Girl clapped its hands and giggled again. “I’m going to have so much fun with you! Ever since we met, I’ve been saving a special place in my plays for you! And I’ve set up a room just for you to stay in and have all kinds of games for us to play and it will be so fun! Won’t that be fun? Say ‘Yes, Mistress.’”

I-330 struggled against the command, but was unable to control her mouth. “Yes… Mistress.”

The Wooden Girl squealed with excitement and jumped up and down. “Say it again! Say it again!”

“Yes, Mistress.”

With another squeal, the Girl started to run circles around the room. “I can’t wait I’m going to tear your skin off then sow it back on and we’ll dance together and I’ll break all of your fingers and I’ll rip out your throat and then kiss it to make it better and we’ll watch the sunset and I’ll make you gouge out people’s eyeballs and eat them whole and-” The Girl stopped running, and stood straight up. “It’s tea time!”

With a twirl, the Girl sat itself down at the table. “Oh Pet, would you be a dear and pour me a cup?”

I-330 walked to the table and picked up the teapot. She began to pour it, but her grasp started to loosen on its own, until she dropped the pot on the floor, causing it to shatter. The Wooden Girl shook its head. “Oh dear. You’ll need to clean that up.”

“Yes, Mistress.” I-330 went on her hands and knees, and started licking up the tea, while the Wooden Girl laughed.

“You missed a bit.” The Wooden Girl put its foot in front of I-330. “Such a bad pet, spilling tea on its master’s foot. Clean it up as well.”

I-330 struggled for a moment, but then leaned forward and licked the wooden foot. Splinters stabbed through her tongue, and when she stopped her mouth was filled with blood.

“That will do, Pet. Now go and get me another teapot.” A cart with a new tea set had appeared in the room. I-330 began to walk toward it, but suddenly came to a stop. Her shadow arm had grabbed the edge of the table, and was refusing to let go. I-330 tugged on the arm, but it kept its hold. The Wooden Girl flicked a finger, and a string sliced the arm off.

“Get the teapot. Now.”

Unhindered by the arm, I-330 walked to the tray, and picked up the teapot with her remaining hand. But as she lifted it up, her shadow arm regrew, and smashed the pot. Before the Wooden Girl could react, the arm extended in a spike that went through the Girl’s forehead. The Girl fell, and the strings that had been controlling I-330 vanished. Her arm’s sudden attack had surprised I-330 as much as the Girl, but once she took in what had happened, she started running for the exit.

The Wooden Girl rose up, it’s face now painted in an image of rage. “No no NO!” The voice screamed through I-330’s head. “You’re ruining everything!” The dolls rose off the shelves, and flew towards I-330, who smashed them with her shadow arm.

“Stop breaking my things!” The Girl screamed as the roof was torn off, and hundreds of strings came from above. I-330 threw open the door to leave, but there was nothing on the other side but the screaming void.

“You’re going to stay….” The Girl said, slowly advancing forward as the strings followed behind it. “And we’re going to play forever.”

It didn’t take long for I-330 to decide that the screaming void was the preferable alternative there. She jumped, and fell into the darkness. For hours she fell, until space began to distort again. The next I-330 knew, she was lying in sand. And all around her was a massive, unending desert.

There seems to be a constant trend of me never getting the chance to just sit down and process things. Writing in this journal seems to be the only opportunity I have to think, and even then it only comes in short bursts between disasters.

What I really wanted to do was lie down on that grey shore and stare at the burning sky. Three Fears, dead in seconds. We’d had all these plans, taking on the Slender Man’s Fears individually, trying to pick them off one by one while I regained this power I was told I should have, until we could afford a direct confrontation. But then the Slender Man just wiped them out, with barely any difficulty. How am I ever supposed to compare to that? I’ve only managed to kill one Fear so far, and that was on accident. It destroyed an entire pocket universe by creating and blowing up a fucking star!

I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Maybe if I actually got some time to sit down and try to plan a way out of this god damn mess, I’d figure something out. But I was only on that shoreline for a few minutes when I suddenly felt the ground shaking beneath me. Out in the ocean, that massive tree was appearing. Which meant the Slender Man wouldn’t be far behind.

Once, I might have tried to fight. But after seeing its power in action…. I just ran. Ran like a coward. A stupid coward, considering I had no idea where I was or where I could go. But you rarely think things through when you’re panicking.

Thing about that beach: no matter how far you run on it, you never seem to move. Every time I looked back, the tree was still the same distance from me. And its branches were growing outward, as if reaching for me. The sand beneath my feet started to give way as huge rifts opened up in the ground, and huge waves rose from the ocean. A rift appeared beneath me, and I started to fall into darkness.

And then, I felt something pulling me. An invisible force, grabbing me and ripping me away from that universe. Everything twisted around me, and I was flung through a chaos of space as the sound of a young girls’ laughter echoed in my mind.

When everything stopped, I was no longer on the beach. Instead, I was… wherever this is. It looks like I’m outside the most stereotypical Disney fairy tale palace imaginable, with gleaming white towers and vibrant gardens. Except it also happened to be floating in the middle of a howling void of darkness and screams.

The front gate is wide open. Honestly, it looks a little too inviting. Given the shrieks of terror coming from the whirling blackness all around the estate, I’m a little suspicious. Hence why I’m just sitting out here and writing instead of exploring.

But I’m going to have to go in and explore eventually. It’s just the sort of thing I do.

The Beach

I’m sitting on a beach of grey sand, watching a still sea as the sky burns from the remains of a dead universe.

What happened to that optimism? We were going to attack. We were going to take the fight to the Fears. Start killing them off. Turn the tides. Win the war. Now… this.

We had been preparing to leave. The Red Cap had suggested we kick our counterattack off by attacking one of the Fears’ pocket universes. If we all attacked one together, we might have been able to kill it before the other Fears arrived to help. The first target was going to be the Black Dog, as that’s the Fear I seem to have had the most success physically fighting.

The Red Cap had started to distort spacetime around us to transport us, when a total silence fell over the temple. Like a switch controlling all the ambient noise had been suddenly switched off. The distortions the Red Cap had been creating vanished, as spacetime reverted to its usual order.

“Oh.” The Red Cap muttered. “Fuck.”

It pushed me away just as black roots broke from the marble floor where I had been standing. The roots wrapped around the Red Cap, and crushed it into a puddle of blood. More roots came out of the ground, impaling the Convocation’s birds and encircling the Brute and Bride. I scrambled across the floor as the roots tore through the tile, coming toward me. Had to stop when my head bumped against the side of the fountain. I looked up, and saw that the blood coming from the fountain had turned black. Cracks were spreading along the marble woman, which quickly reached her eyes. Black branches burst from those eyes, followed by more branches from all over the statue, tearing apart the fountain and splashing that black blood all over me. Had to wipe it away before I could see again, and when I opened my eyes, in place of the fountain was the Slender Man.

It looked down at me, and I felt frozen to that spot. Its hands reached toward me, and started to grow, slowly coming closer. I knew I had to get away from it, but my body couldn’t move. Its hands were almost at me, when a wave of blood hit it, knocking it back. The blood formed into the Red Cap, who quickly shouted at me to run before turning into liquid again and wrapping around the Slender Man.

With the Slender Man pushed back, I could start moving again. Jumped to my feet, and started running away from it. A pillar had been knocked over by one of the roots, so I jumped behind it, using it as cover so I could look at what was happening. The Red Cap was flowing through the air around the Slender Man, changing between humanoid and liquid as it tried to press the Slender Man back further. The Convocation and Brute and Bride had joined in, shooting lightning and fire at it. None of it seemed to have any effect; the Slender Man stood still, unfazed by the attacks hitting it, not once looking away from me.

A bird landed on my shoulder, and started tugging at me. I slowly followed its pull away from the fight, but kept looking back at the Slender Man. As I moved away, it followed after, slowly taking each step, without a care for the Fears trying to stop it. The Red Cap appeared in front of it, and blood poured from every nook and crack of the temple behind it. The blood came into a huge wave that towered over everyone, which thundered toward the Slender Man, shattering the roots and pillars in its way.

The wave hit the Slender Man and completely enveloped it. But when the wave had passed, it was still standing. It pointed an arm at the Red Cap, and black branches rapidly grew out of it, impaling the Red Cap. The Red Cap struggled against the branches for a few moments, and then dissolved into a pool of lifeless, inert blood.

The Convocation swarmed around the Slender Man, completely covering it in birds. Sparks flew between their wings, turning them into a mass of lightning that roared around the Slender Man. Hundreds of branches exploded outward, tearing the birds off the Slender Man and ripping them to shreds. As the blood and guts rained down, the branches retracted back into the Slender Man.

A stream of fire roared across the temple, exploding around the Slender Man as the Burning Bride appeared. The Brute appeared behind the Slender Man, swinging one of its massive fists. Branches came out of the Slender Man’s back, wrapping around the Brute before it could finish its punch. The branches brought the Brute to the ground, trapping it. The Bride unleashed another stream of fire, but as it approached, the Slender Man held out a hand. The fire stopped, then started to flow into its hand. It condensed into a small ball of fire, which vibrated and glowed with all the energy being compressed into it. It almost looked like a star was growing in its hand.

The bird that had been pulling me earlier started tugging at my sleeve again, and I let it guide me. As we got away, spacetime around us started to distort. Before we teleported, I looked back once. The Bride had been trapped to the ground by more branches, and the star in the Slender Man’s hand was violently shaking as more fire was drawn into it.

There was a burning flash of light and a roar just as we teleported, and we appeared on a grey beach that stretched on and on. The place looked like it was shrouded in twilight at first, but then a sun exploded into existence in the sky, bathing everything in burning light. Trails of flame leapt from the sun, leaving burning gashes across the sky.

The bird that had taken me there, the last of the Convocation, let go of me. It tried to fly, but fell to the ground. After a few more attempts to flap its wings, it became completely still. Leaving me all alone on this grey beach.

What do you do when you start questioning who you are?

I’m looking at the last entry I wrote in this journal, and I’m having a hard time convincing myself I said those things, let alone wrote them down. No, I don’t want the Red Cap bowing to me, it’s fucking creepy. Why the fuck am I even working alongside these monsters? There’s no point to their rebellion thing. I already lost. Humanity’s dead.

Of course I’m still going to wipe the Fears out of existence as payback for that, but there’s no reason I should be as… eager about it as I seemed in my last entry.

I think I’ve been putting this off for too long. Whenever I’ve been in a really bad pinch, I keep being saved by shutting off any thought process and letting what can only be called instinct handle everything for me. Suddenly gaining the ability to withstand excessive physical trauma and fight with a sword during Grendel’s revolution; almost singlehandedly fighting my way out of a heavily fortified bunker when I woke up in another universe; killing a fucking Fear with one hand…. I don’t know where it’s coming from, it just happens. Like with this arm. There was no process of learning how to make it shapeshift, that knowledge just kinda gradually filtered into my brain. Never took the time to stop and think about it. Always was too busy, or just didn’t want to think about it. Kept pushing it off in favor of more direct issues. But ever since R’lyeh, it’s been getting worse. The whispers, the knowledge, these ambitions….

Thing is, I do have an idea of the why for all of it. Nyarlathotep. I just keep wishing that wasn’t the reason. I’m me. I-330. Badass time traveling monster hunter/The Doctor wannabe extraordinaire. That’s all I want to be. Not an ancient malevolent manifestation of chaos reborn. Just me. But the way things are going, I’m starting to think my opinion’s not going to matter much in the end….

I didn’t even get a chance to look at our new destination when we arrived before the Red Cap grabbed me and practically shouted, “How did you do that?”

“… What?” Yeah, not exactly my most aware at the time. My mind was still reeling.

“That thing where you broke spacetime! With your hand!” It let go of me, and took a few cautious steps back. “Grendel needed the entropy sword before he could use that kind of power! And you just… with only your hand….” Its eyes widened, and it started to speak almost with awe. “You really are Nyarlathotep.”

Out of habit, I started to deny that claim. But the words didn’t come out. I didn’t understand how I’d been able to kill the Plague Doctor. Not on an intellectual level, at least. I’d just acted, and somehow….

“This is good. This is very good.” The Red Cap stroked its chin. “If we just stay alive long enough for you to get back your full power….”

“Wait, this isn’t already full power?”

“Oh no. Nyarlathotep was a god, milady. Breaking apart spacetime would have been a party trick for him. When you start juggling planets, then you’ll be getting an idea of what you’re capable of doing.”

That sounded… impressive. And highly impractical. Why would anyone need to juggle planets?

Can’t say I was entirely comfortable with this line of conversation, so I let it drop there. Time to start looking around at wherever I was.

At first glance, it looked like a vaguely Greco-Roman temple. It was constructed of white marble, with evenly spaced pillars reaching up to an arched ceiling. Scattered without any pattern I could see were marble statues of people. Those statues were… interesting. I wasn’t even aware some of those positions were anatomically possible. And it was really hard to tell if their expressions were of pleasure or pain. At the center was a fountain made of intertwined marble bodies. Their hands held up the figure of a pregnant woman, her belly slit open and blood spilling out into the pool below.

The Red Cap noticed me staring at the fountain and smirked. “You like the décor?” It said. “It took me a while to find enough people for it, but the result is just so… stimulating.”

“People? These are actual people?”

“Of course. A collection of my favorite victims. I wanted to preserve them for immortality.”

Sometimes, the Red Cap does a really great job of reminding me what a bastard it is. “So then, this place is….”

“Me. Me as manifested in a pocket universe, like what the Library was to the Blind Man.” The Red Cap suddenly appeared next to me, and whispered, “I always knew you’d be inside me someday, milady.”

I quickly pushed it away and tried to ignore the tingling feeling its breath had left on me. “Wasn’t the whole reason we were in the Library because no one would think to look there? Isn’t coming here a bit obvious?”

“Probably. Not like we really had much of a choice, since you did wipe our hiding place from existence.”

“Well then, what are you planning to do now?”

“That’s a good question. What would you like us to do, milady?”

“What?”

The Red Cap fell onto a knee, and bowed its head. Behidn it, the Convocation and the Brute and Bride appeared. “We are yours to command, Nyarlathotep.” The Red Cap said. “Just give us the order.”

What. But… Shit, I was still trying to deal with the fact that the entire human race had gone extinct because I’d fucked up, I wasn’t ready for this.

The Red Cap continued. “Shall we destroy them? Shall we crush all those who defied you? Make them pay for their insolence?”

… But it wasn’t my fault they had all died. The image of the Plague Doctor swinging its cane at the prone humans returned to my head. There’d been no need for that. There had been no need for any of the wanton cruelty the Fears had done. This wasn’t my fault. This was theirs.

“We can do it. With you at our lead, we can frind all your foes into nothingness. We can be the instruments of your revenge.”

Familiar whispers started to echo through my head, and I felt my skin scrawling. Them bowing to me was… right, somehow. They should obey me. They should all obey me. The Fears have taken too much from me. And I will make them suffer for it. “We’re going to kill them.” I said to the Red Cap. “Kill them all.”