An introduction, if you will, to something new. Something different.
What makes the Cthulhu Mythos so frightening? Fear of the unknown, mostly. But we've spent nearly a hundred years since the first piece of Yog-Sothothery first sent shivers down reader's spines. What is unknown anymore?
This is a different take on the Mythos, a different take on Stargate. This is the first of several stories, many of which I posted from 2008 to 2010 under a different name on a different website.
This is an introduction to The Shadow Over Atlantis.
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The sea shimmered all around him, gentle blues and greens filling his vision. A faint dusting of plankton drifted through the water. He sighed in pleasure and dove down, deep into the waters. Greens and blues slowly darkened to a blue-black twilight and still he swam deeper. The silence was broken by the sound of water flowing through his gills, the slowing pound of his heart, the soft song of a whale in the distance...
Something pricked in the back of his mind, something about the whale but he ignored it. It was unimportant. He swam down past faint dots of light, flashing flutters of anglerfish and glowing worms. The base of the reef was down here somewhere...
Maybe it wasn't. This ocean didn't taste right, not really. Not like the one he grew up with. Something was different...
The growing glow from beneath banished all doubts. Ah, there it was. Soon he'd be home, home and safe. Safe with his family at Y'ha-nthlei at the base of Devil Reef. His grandmother was there. His father was dead, admittedly, too much of a coward to accept the gift of his blood.
The lights of the city coalesced out of the gloom and debris of the abyssal plain. This...
Wait a minute...
Where were the corals? Where was the reef? Where was Y'ha-nthlei? This was not the city of his ancestors. This city gleamed with shining metal, golden piers. Six arms spread out into the silt of the plain. Great blue lights shone bright and artificial into the ocean. Worst of all the city seemed deserted. No one swam around her spires or through her corridors. No voices sang from her balconies. Nothing grew in her heart. Nothing but cold steel and a single eternal consciousness.
The whale groaned behind him, swimming at him with its mouth wide.
He screamed.
Dr. Rodney McKay shot awake, his shriek dying on his lips. He sat up and gasped for air, tasting salt and dust. He looked out to the balcony and realized the glass door was wide open. An angry wind brought the spray of ocean all the way up the tower to his room. Or maybe it was just his senses playing tricks on him.
Rodney got up and dragged on a bathrobe before stepping onto the cold floor of his balcony. Far beneath his feet the ocean pounded relentlessly against the piers of Atlantis.
It was a mistake to accept this assignment. It was too dangerous for someone like him.
Too dangerous for a deep one hybrid.
He should never have come here.