In a tightly guarded dwelling, a young woman was heavily watched. Her guardians were amphibious abnormalities dressed head and toe in fish-like scales. Feathery gills were around their necks. The Deep Ones, while normally aquatic, moved about on dry land with little issue. They, alongside the Yuggya, surrounded themselves around a seeming human with red hair. Her belly was engorged from her nearing her time of delivery.
The red-haired woman was a Great Old One, one of the many offspring of the High Priest of the Great Old Ones, Cthulhu. The Great Dreamer consulted his superior Nyarlathotep at one point in the endless millennia about his realization that he was not truly immortal. Even in death, Nyarlathotep posthumously oversaw the birth of Cthulhu's daughter, influencing Cthulhu to entrust his Deep Ones to protect his child with their lives. For when – not if – Cthulhu was truly destroyed, his daughter, Cthylla, would give birth to him.
Hastur knew of his hated half-brother's plan to achieve a return to power in this way. During the arrival of the gods of old to the Earth, Hastur attacked one of the Deep Ones' underwater civilizations to kill his half-niece.
"Have you heard these tremors?" a Deep One asked another.
"Yes I have, but I am not afraid," the other Deep One remarked, "I sense that it's just the result of the gods awakening."
Their civilization existed underground on the shores of some beach somewhere. Cthylla was in her room being tended to by her servants when she too heard the odd sounds from the outside. Cthylla got up from her resting place and advanced towards the door. She was stopped by one of her guards. "It is much too dangerous for you to go out there, my lord."
"But what is this great disturbance?" she asked, "it sounds unsettling."
A few of the Deep Ones picked up their shields and other weapons and stood fiercely to the main entrance of their civilization. A large bang echoed through the door knocking them down, paralyzed. As they scrambled to get back up, the brunt force was exerted on the door again. Once. Twice. Three times. The door was slowly getting off its hinges with each violent attack. Slam. Slam. Slam. A tall, thin Deep One, the leader of sorts, retrieved his sword.
"We must not allow them to enter!" he commanded.
The Deep Ones tried to hold on a little longer by pressing themselves against the door. The slamming stopped momentarily lasting for roughly thirty minutes. "They're gone," the leading Deep One proclaimed. The rest of his kind were slow to cheer because of their fears, but they took what he had said in confidence and began to lower their guards.
"Princess Cthyalla is safe for no-"
BAM.
The door was slashed open and crumbled. On the other end of it was Hastur and his legions of bloated, scaly minions. Hastur scratched incessantly at his mask as if contemplating what his next move would be. The Deep Ones readied their weapons in anticipation. Hastur chuckled lowly, relishing in the fear that some of the Deep Ones had for him. "I can already taste your fear," Hastur said tauntingly, "I'll let you live another miserable day if you tell me where my niece is."
"We will not betray her whereabouts to you, snake," the leader of the Deep Ones said. There was a noticeable shaking in his voice, but he struggled to withhold it. Hastur seized a few of his men with his tentacles and presented them to the leader. The leader's eyes widened due to knowing what would be coming next.
"Is that so? Well, I have some time to kill, so let's play."
Before the Deep One could respond, Hastur stabbed his tentacles into the Deep Ones' chests ripping their hearts to shreds. The other Deep Ones screamed knowing that their species was by all accounts immortal lest killed through great violence. Three Deep Ones grabbed a hold of their spears and sprinted to jab Hastur's tentacles with them. It proved to be a fruitless endeavor for the Great Old One merely stretched out his hands and set them ablaze. He tossed the bodies of the dead Deep Ones onto the ground at the leader's feet. More arrived to try to assist in the fight but Hastur quickly removed his mask. The Deep Ones became hopelessly insane and were reduced to catatonic states. The leader saw one of the soldiers still alive and looked sternly at him.
"Go help Cthyalla to escape!"
"But, sir, what about..."
"Just do it! Forget about me!"
The Deep One reluctantly nodded and dashed to collect Cthulhu's daughter. The leader was now the only one left to face off against the King in Yellow. Hastur laughed maniacally while slipping his mask on his face. "Minions," he said, "go and kill everyone here! Enjoy your fill!"
When they heard him, they immediately raced off to face the other Deep Ones scattered throughout the civilization. Hastur returned his attention to the leader of the Deep Ones. "I must say that I admire your determination, but I must tell you that everyone dies whether at my hands or through natural means. Think of me as one of the highest representatives of chaos. Shall we begin?"
Dozens of Deep Ones fell due to the divine powers of the Great Old One. Cthylla was made to bear witness to the civilization's destruction. Thousands of bodies seared to a crisp from the fire that Hastur rained down on the city; other Deep Ones were mutilated upon recognition. Once Patrick banished Yog-Sothoth back outside of time and space, Hastur was cast back to his alien planet angered that his attempts of killing Cthulhu had gone unfulfilled.
The Deep Ones had evacuated their city and hid out in Royal Woods to protect Cthylla. They stood around her as she was lying on her back. It was approaching the time for Cthulhu's rebirth. They muttered an extraterrestrial language for a long period until they heard a rustling. Alerted, they turned their attention to a tall woman. She glared intensely with her one eye. The Deep Ones immediately knew who she was and bowed to her.
"I'm here for you, Cthylla," she said.
Cthylla lifted her head up. "Lord Yog-Sothoth? What brings you here?"
Yog-Sothoth towered over her and extended her hand. "I'm certain you know why I am here. Your uncle has returned to Earth and is searching for you now."
Cthylla frowned, understanding what she was saying. "Just don't make it too painful."
Yog-Sothoth waved her hand over Cthylla's body, sensing the child move within her womb. Bending down, she tapped Cthylla's swollen abdomen with her long fingers. The next thing Cthylla knew, Yog-Sothoth's hands dove through her outer skin, tearing their way into her flesh. Cthylla grimaced. Her legs shook violently from the most subtle of Yog-Sothoth's probing. The Deep Ones stood by again chattering an indiscernible language. Cthylla's green blood pooled onto the ground. Yog-Sothoth made deep incisions into the mound of flesh surrounding Cthylla's alien womb until she wrapped her fingers around Cthulhu's head. Cthylla breathed heavily and groaned, fighting off the stinging pain if her dying body could allow it. Her life was slowly slipping away through the fingers of the Guardian of the Gate. With a final thrust, Yog-Sothoth completely removed Cthylla's spawn from her womb. Cthylla sighed a breath of relief. Her body gave out and transformed into an amorphous form. Yog-Sothoth held the baby in her hands quizzically observing it. She then rubbed some of Cthylla's blood before handling the child to the Deep Ones.
"Now to send Hastur off his track."
Shortly after the death of his mother, the reborn Cthulhu was whisked away from the dwelling and into the wilderness. Cthulhu looked around his surroundings. His eyes beheld oddities like tall, slender trees with thick tufts of vegetation. Deer and other forms of forest life scurried from behind bushes and the tall trees. One deer stopped in its tracks to observe the young Cthulhu. The deer galloped in place from the sheer ugliness of the infant Great Old One, standing on its hind legs and falling over dead, presumably out of shock.
Before him, Yog-Sothoth manifested. The sudden appearance spooked the Great Old One, but otherwise, Cthulhu was intrigued. She arrived with a few of the Deep Ones. A Deep One grunted in that same tone of indescribable language from the refuge. Yog-Sothoth had little to no issue with understanding its inquiry.
"This is all necessary," she explained, "Hastur may realize that Cthulhu was still alive and try to go for him once more; this is to make him stronger."
Yog-Sothoth drew a circle on the ground before stepping back. There came a rustling from the ground and through it erupted a yellow light. Something bubbled to the surface letting out a deathly groan. The gelatinous mass inched its way out of the conjured portal repeatedly going back and forth unable to decide what to transform into.
The young Cthulhu tried to inch away from the amorphous blob to no avail. Rows of teeth and eyes formed; it shifted a portion of its body into a clawed hand and grabbed Cthulhu by the leg. Cthulhu firmly held himself on the ground to keep the blob from pulling him further. A sickening slurp drew Cthulhu's leg into the blob's body. Cthulhu let out a yelp of anguish. His leg was plunged deeper into the blob's body with enough suction-force. The force created small tears in Cthulhu's leg until the joints within it completely broke off. With his alien blood staining the ground, the rest of Cthulhu's body was drawn into the blob.
"It will require a large amount of training," Yog-Sothoth explained, "so we shall start off with a shoggoth."
In a town 20 hours from Royal Woods, Michigan, Patrick was tending to housework. He had long since named Nyarlathotep's daughter Mia Stark. But the oddest aspect about her is that despite being roughly the size of a human child at three months, Mia grew rapidly in comparison to her peers, toppling the height of her elementary school classmates. She even learned to walk and talk at around eight days afterward. Much like any of the Outer Gods, she had a strange smell to her that was nauseating to others. Animals also feared and hated her oftentimes going as far as to attack her unprovoked. She was a constant fear the students and teachers had on their minds.
"What should we do?" one of the teachers asked.
Mia lacked a comprehension of the inner mechanisms' humans shared. Not once did she respond to her teacher's probing her for a reaction. She was constantly on the receiving end of the ire of her classmates who bullied her relentlessly. In fact, as Patrick was preparing to pick his daughter up, he received a call. Not thinking too much about it, he answered his phone, his eyes widening with what he was hearing.
"I'll be there in a few minutes," Patrick said.
He got into his car in anxiety. If what he was hearing was true, his daughter had unwittingly injured one of her classmates. When he arrived at the school, he saw that the students were gathered around in a circle all looking at something lying on the ground. Mia was a short distance away, alone. She looked down on the ground, not even reacting to her father's sudden appearance. He then walked over to also look at the site the students were gathered around. A young boy was writhing on the ground in a maddened frenzy with his eyes glazed over.
"Oh no," Patrick said to himself.
Patrick took random glances of his daughter on the ride home. His daughter still had a blank expression devoid of any readable emotions. "It happened again, Dad," she finally said.
Patrick gulped nervously. "I'm quite certain that everything will be alright, princess."
Mia shook her head defiantly. "He was making me mad, but something happened. I blacked out then I woke up and he was on the ground."
Patrick listened tentatively. He was way aware more than anyone else that his adopted daughter wasn't human but rather the spawn of his master. He was hopeful that she'd inherit his ability to comprehend human morality, but instead, she found herself becoming more and more distant from other people besides himself. Unlike her father, she did not commit her actions out of malice, but she otherwise did not understand what she was doing as uncivilized. He broke out of his train of thought when his daughter spoke again.
"Dad, is there something wrong with me?"
Patrick went to shake his head in denial. "No, don't say that, dear. You're just…different is all."
Mia sensed the uncertainty in his voice becoming more disheartened by it.