TITLE: A Deplorable Hobby
AUTHOR: Tiffany Park
CATEGORY: Humor, Crossover with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos
SPOILERS: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle Chapitres 150 through 172.
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNINGS: A few dubious words. Tentacles and slime. Lots of artistic license taken with characterization.
SUMMARY: The only thing Fai deplores more than Ashura's hobby of collecting disreputable grimoires of dubious provenance is Ashura's tendency to try out the spells in those weird and hoary tomes. Cleanup duty is just so much work.
STATUS: Complete
ARCHIVE: Please ask first
DISCLAIMER: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and its characters belong to CLAMP, Del Rey Ballantine Books, Random House Inc., Kodansha Ltd., Funimation, and probably a whole bunch of other people and companies I know nothing about. H.P. Lovecraft's work was written almost 100 years ago, and at this point belongs to all kinds of publishing houses, or is in public domain. De Vermis Mysteriis was created by Robert Block while working in Lovecraft's Mythos. Many professional authors have written in Lovecraft's Mythos, so this list is not exhaustive by any means. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: You don't need to know about the Cthulhu Mythos to understand this story, though some of the namedropping will be funnier if you do. Really, though, hideous abominations from beyond space and time should be pretty self-explanatory. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, y'all!
Happy Halloween!
A Deplorable Hobby
by
Tiffany Park
An otherworldly explosion rocked the North Tower of Luval Castle.
Fai felt the blast in his apartment on the other side of the castle, where he was sitting with a book by the nice, warm fireplace. He didn't even look up from his reading, despite the fact that the book was nothing more than a ridiculous, fluffy adventure novel to while away a lazy afternoon. He figured Ashura could jolly well handle the explosion himself. This thought was not as callous as it might seem. Fai had felt the magic that triggered the boom and knew that Ashura had caused it.
"Faaaaiiiiiii!" The urgency in Ashura's magical call was not ignorable.
Fai did his best to ignore it anyway, and kept reading. He turned a page, intent on the idiot heroes and their absurd dilemma.
"Faaaaiiiiiii!" That time was a demand. The entire castle shuddered, as though a monstrous door had slammed hard enough to shake the foundations.
Fai stared determinedly at his book.
"Faaaaiiiiiii!" Now the call held more than a little panic.
Had the door slammed open or shut? Shut would be good, but Ashura wouldn't be panicked over shut. Open, it was. With a sigh, Fai set his book aside, stood, and collected his wizard's staff. He used it to inscribe a series of glowing, magical sigils in the air about him. Quick as a wink, the spell transported him to Ashura's location.
He materialized on the top floor of the North Tower. Flickering shadows and charnel stenches filled the space. Inhuman, other-dimensional energy buffeted him with the fury of a gale force wind.
A door and frame constructed of thick, oily wood planks and iron fittings stood upright in the center of the floor, unconnected to any walls. At present, it was partially open. Ashura stood on one side of it, gripping his staff and shooting enough magic power at the thing to shatter ordinary wood to splinters.
His efforts were stymied by the clusters of slimy, greenish-black tentacles oozing through the opening of the portal. Suckers lined with sharp teeth dug into wood and iron. The flabby tentacles curled with menace, dripping thick globs of mucous.
"Ew," said Fai, making a moue of distaste at the revolting apparitions.
"Help me get this door shut, Fai!" A drop of sweat rolled down Ashura's forehead and onto the tip of his nose, where it dangled, quivering.
Fai spied a toppled bookstand and an exceeding large text lying on the floor to Ashura's left. "Dad, what did you do? Is that your new grimoire? The one you got from that shady magic trader last month?"
"Just help me, will you?"
Fai sauntered over to the bookstand and righted it. He lifted the book to read the title. "The Book of Dead Names, by Abdul Alhazred. I knew it! It is your new one. I told you not to trust that wretched peddler!"
"When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it!" More sweat tickled down Ashura's nose. The drop grew too large and fell to the floor. Another started forming.
The door planks warped outward. Red-brown slime seeped from cracks in the straining wood. The tentacles wrapped over the door, reaching around for the door latch. Ashura pushed harder with magic, and the door deformed inward. Something on the other side let out a shriek that would have curdled a normal human's blood.
"Fai, please, a hand here?" Ashura sounded a bit winded.
Sometimes Fai despaired of his adoptive father's naïve curiosity about other dimensions and their denizens. There was nothing but trouble and horror out there. Fai already knew that from his childhood encounter with Fei Wang Reed.
He didn't bother to consider that he himself had also come from another dimension.
He set the book on the stand and flipped through the pages. "Okay, so which was it? Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth? Oh, goodness, please tell me it wasn't Shub-Niggurath." He shuddered. "Imagine letting that old goat and her disgusting Thousand Young into our world."
"It wasn't any of those!" Ashura raised his voice over the sound of snapping wood. "I'm not an idiot!"
"It must have been something bad!"
"I was just trying to summon a Shoggoth, that's all! Just one measly little Shoggoth."
One of the tentacles elongated, stretching out to wrap around Ashura's staff. Ashura sent a surge of power through it. Something screamed and the tentacle let go. Slightly luminous protoplasm oozed through the doorway. Myriads of disgusting pustules formed and opened, revealing malevolent, green-glowing eyes.
"Oh, great," complained Fai. "A Shoggoth. Are you out of your mind?" He circled the door, careful to stay well out of range of the tentacles and slime, muttering, "Tentacles. Jeeze, why did it have to be tentacles? Nothing good ever comes of tentacles." Interestingly enough, the back of the door appeared perfectly boring and mundane. He saw Ashura through the opening between the door and the jamb, and nothing else. Of course, Ashura was looking a wee bit stressed. Fai joined his father on the side of the door with the eldritch abomination pressing through.
"If you don't mind, Fai," Ashura said, clenching his jaw. He leaned forward, attempting to drive the iridescent black slime and tentacles back. A wooden plank broke, and a few more tentacles slipped through the new opening. The stomach-turning smell of rotting death increased. Dreadful, triumphant roaring a million times worse than a fire-breathing dragon reverberated throughout the tower.
"Honestly," said Fai, "I didn't think it was possible to summon a Shoggoth. They're physical, aren't they?" He leveled his staff at the door and added his not inconsiderable strength to Ashura's in an attempt to force the portal closed.
"It's not like summoning a deity or spirit," said Ashura, panting. The crystal topping his staff flared with irregular pulses, a sure sign that it was reaching the breaking point. "This door is a gateway to the world where they exist."
"And you opened the gate?" Fai pushed more magic through his own staff. His crystal glowed.
"Right in the middle of a nest of the things."
"That was dumb, Dad. Not to mention reckless."
"Look, kid, it was an accident. I was trying for just one," Ashura explained defensively. Sweat poured down his face and crawled along the strained tendons in his neck.
"And missed, obviously." Throbbing, obscene strength pushed back against Fai's magic. He leaned harder into his magical efforts.
Ashura nodded shortly. "I only wanted a small one."
"Are there any small ones? I thought they were all gigantic." Fai felt the strain, too, and he was many times stronger than his father. This must be draining Ashura dreadfully. Best to end it in a hurry. Fai threw all his might against the door, grunting with the effort. His staff glowed like the sun and his magic scintillated with power, burning the tentacles and forcing them to withdraw a few inches.
The two wizards went silent, focusing all their concentration and power on the door and the unspeakable, star-spawned monstrosity beyond. Little by little, they made headway. Protoplasm bubbled and popped, with malice-filled green eyes forming and un-forming as the slime retreated. Tentacles writhed in outrage and hatred.
"Almost there," Fai said through gritted teeth. His forehead beaded with perspiration, and his muscles trembled. When this was over, he was going to go find a nice, quiet corner of the castle and throw up. And then he was going to chew his father out for such a dumb stunt. He felt a weakening in the pressure from the other side of the door. "Now! Push now!"
Both wizards threw all their magical might against the door. An indescribable surge of supernatural energy burst into an explosion that lit up the room with blinding white light. The concussion threw Fai backwards. He hit the stone floor hard enough to stun him.
When the light faded, the mystical door was gone. The horrible stink had vanished with it. Daylight streamed in from the windows. Fai blinked. In the excitement, he'd forgotten it was early afternoon. The monster and its accompanying shadows had made the hour seem like midnight.
"Dang, that one hurt," Fai griped. He picked himself up and stood, rubbing his backside. "I'm gonna have such a collection of bruises."
Ashura lay flat on his back, sucking in great gulps of air. "Idiot child." Groaning with exertion, he laboriously sat up and stared at the scorched spot on the floor where the doorway to doom from beyond space and time had been just moments before.
Fai walked over to him and extended a hand. "That's a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. I'm not the one who tried to summon the Elder Things' nasty creations."
Ashura took Fai's hand and let his adopted son pull him to his feet and steady him. "The Elder Things created them to be a slave race. I thought we might be able to control one and put it to use. Did you know the Shoggoths built entire cities?"
"Hmph." Fai was not impressed. "We don't need Shoggoths to build cities. Peasants do just fine for manual labor, and they're a zillion times easier to control." He picked up his staff. A thought struck him.
"Hey," he said, peering hard at Ashura. "Shoggoths don't cause insanity, do they? I know a lot of the beasties in those weird grimoires of yours make people who have close encounters with them go insane." While Fai deplored Ashura's hobby of collecting disreputable grimoires of dubious provenance, he had also read through a few of those untrustworthy tomes. Just to see what Ashura was getting himself into. Someone had to protect Ashura from himself. Of course, Fai wasn't curious about the books for any other reason. Not at all. Not him.
"There's nothing in the book like that about Shoggoths," Ashura said. He collected his own staff. The crystal was cracked, with charred spots along the fracture lines. "Damn, now I have to fix this."
Fai huffed. "This is no way for a proper wizard-king to behave. Last month it was the Book of Eibon, then that translation of the Eltdown Shards, and now this. You should be governing the country and engaging in respectable pastimes like bonsai or composing bad poetry or something, not experimenting with dodgy spells written by mysterious dead sorcerers."
"Quit nagging, Fai." Ashura didn't even look up from his inspection of his crystal. He scowled at it. "I think I'm going to need a new one. What a pain."
"Are you sure Shoggoths don't cause insanity?" Fai asked suspiciously.
"Pretty sure. Now, as for Yog-Sothoth or Azathoth…"
"Don't you dare summon anything else from that wretched book."
"I won't."
"I know you won't." Fai pointed a finger at the grimoire, incinerating the vile tome in a cheerful blaze of flamboyant blue flames.
Ashura stamped his foot. "Dammit, Fai, do you know how much that book cost me?"
"Do I look like I care?" Fai marched self-righteously to the chamber's exit. "Keep out of trouble for a while, will ya?" was his parting shot as he flung the door open.
He stepped onto the long, spiral staircase leading down just as Ashura mumbled, "Now where is my copy of De Vermis Mysteriis?"
Fai hesitated for a fraction of an instant, and then resolutely headed down the stairs. Days like this made him certain that working for Fei Wang Reed was going to be a cakewalk in comparison.
*** end ***
October 2014
Notes for anyone who might be curious:
Abdul Alhazred: "The Mad Arab" who compiled the Necronomicon. He was devoured by an invisible monster in 738 A.D.
The Book of Dead Names: One of the handful of names for the Necronomicon, a dark book of magic and information about Cthulhu, the Great Old Ones, the Outer Gods, and other abominations. Just studying the Necronomicon is dangerous, and those who try to master its spells come to bad ends.
The Book of Eibon: Another dangerous grimoire, written by the Hyperborean wizard Eibon in prehistoric times. It contains Eibon's magical formulae, including spells for the slaying of certain otherworldly horrors.
De Vermis Mysteriis: Yet another dangerous grimoire. In particular, it includes spells to summon strange entities such as the Shambler from the Stars, a horrific form of space vampire. This usually ends in catastrophe for the summoner.
The Eltdown Shards: Pottery shards dating to the Triassic Period covered with strange symbols. Translations circulate among secretive cults.
Cthulhu: Either one of the Great Old Ones, or their high priest. "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." ("The Call of Cthulhu")
Yog-Sothoth: One of the Great Old Ones/Outer Gods. "It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign..." ("Through the Gates of the Silver Key")
Shoggoth: "It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter." ("At the Mountains of Madness")
Elder Things: Also sometimes called the Elder Ones. Extraterrestrial beings that colonized Earth one billion years ago. They died out due to a combination of the last ice age and being destroyed by their own creations, the Shoggoths. Should not be confused with the Great Old Ones.
Azathoth: One of the Great Old Ones/Outer Gods. "Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes." ("The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath")
Shub-Niggurath: One of the Great Old Ones/Outer Gods. The Black Goat of the Woods with A Thousand Young. Also called "Lord of the Wood." Never described, only referenced. Considering that other deities and entities were described, this one must be really bad. Use your imagination.
The Great Old Ones and/or The Outer Gods (depends on which story you are reading): "A loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and who have since fallen into a deathlike sleep." (Daniel Harms, "A Brief History of the Cthulhu Mythos") Most exist outside and/or beyond normal space-time, and all are somehow restricted from regular interactions with humans. This is A Very Good Thing.