"Wake up."
Through the haze of sleep, Queen Elsa of Arendelle heard the voice penetrating the silence. She did not have any difficulty being shaken from her rest. She was always a light sleeper, particularly on this day, with the knowledge of the task she would have to soon undertake weighing heavily on her mind.
Dim sunlight, diffused by the overcast sky outside, filtered through Elsa's eyelids as they fluttered open. Lifting her head up from her arms folded on the table, she turned to look at her visitor.
Brushing aside a strand of dark hair with his long index finger, the man peered down at the queen.
"The time is drawing near, your Majesty. You don't want to miss your big day, do you?"
"I wasn't planning to. I was only hoping that I could get some sleep. Without being interrupted."
His lips curled upwards. Elsa couldn't tell if his smile was borne out of concern, or amusement.
"Well, it is good to see you decided to rest up. We wouldn't want to see you fall down from exhaustion before the whole thing is over, now would we?"
He moved and peered out the window.
"But my oh my, you have certainly assembled quite the army. Are you sure it will be enough? The Deep Ones will not take very kindly to you standing in their way."
"Stop talking to me and get out of my kingdom. Now."
Elsa pushed past the man and fiddled with the latch on the window, turning it and letting the pane of glass swing open.
"That's just what your father told me."
The queen ignored the unwanted guest, finished with listening to him. She leapt from the window, materializing ice beneath her and sliding down her newly-formed path.
The man watched her descend down to the fjord, and sighed to himself.
"Young people these days. They have no respect for their Elders..."
Smoke swirled around him and he faded away, just as mysteriously as he arrived.
A dark sense of déjà vu came over Elsa as she remembered the night of her coronation. Anna had gone to such lengths to help her and reverse what had happened to the land, and here Arendelle was, frozen again.
Thoughts moved through the queen's head: thoughts of the long years shut away in her room, thoughts of losing her parents, thoughts of Hans' failed attempt at the throne, thoughts of her nearly losing her sister.
In comparison to the predicament she found herself in, the problems of her past seemed almost nostalgic.
Elsa brought herself to focus back on the present as she landed smoothly on the surface of the frozen fjord. Waving away her ice slide, she turned around and surveyed the features of her standing army.
Assembled before their creator, more than a thousand frosty knights stood at attention. Standing at 8 feet tall, each one was equipped with weapons of magical ice: a sword strapped to their side, a large shield in their left hand, and a long pike in their right.
"You know your orders. Anything that comes up from the sea, you kill. Do you understand?"
The icemen responded with a collective stomp of their feet. Unlike their departed relatives, Olaf and Marshmallow, they possessed no voice, personality or emotion. They had been designed solely for war, nothing more, nothing less.
Elsa took one last look at her surroundings. Her gaze lingered on the big, orange bonfire that sat atop a cliff, wood being thrown into it periodically by two icemen, their bodies protected from the heat by their own personal flurries.
Everything was in place.
Out past the fjord, where the ice ended and the water began, a scaly hand broke up through the surface. The thing the hand belonged to grabbed onto the ice and hauled itself up.
As the cold seawater dripped off its dark-green, rubbery-looking body, Elsa got her first good look at the undersea race which she had only heard rumors of up to that point. It appeared to be a cross between a human and a very, very ugly fish. Its mouth, devoid of lips, seemed fixed into a permanent snarl. Its knife-like teeth were as sharp as its claws, which sprouted off each webbed finger.
Dozens upon dozens of more hands reached out of the sea, climbing up onto the solid fjord. They stood there for a moment, their dark eyes all fixed on the snow queen.
"Battle formations."
Her army obeyed the order, rapidly moving into a Macedonian phalanx and blocking off the entire main passage into Arendelle, barring entry.
Just as the Deep Ones broke into a sprint towards her, Elsa whistled. From above, another of her creations, a giant ice eagle, flew down. She quickly climbed onto its back and was carried up into the sky. The fish people rushed past her, charging towards the winter battalion.
Without hesitation, the Deep Ones charged straight into the waiting spears of their opponents. They willingly stabbed themselves through, dark blue blood spattering onto the fjord.
From out of the water, a few dozen more of the creatures ran forward, again allowing themselves to be speared on the end of their enemies' weapons.
Up in the air circled the eagle, Elsa being safely carried on top of it. As she viewed the fight below, she saw the Deep Ones repeat their actions over and over again. A group of them would come out of the water, run to the icemen, and kill themselves by leaping right into the pikes which were thrust toward them.
The Deep Ones were not even attacking her soldiers, they were just committing mass suicide. Elsa knew something was wrong; the skirmish was going too smoothly, things were going too well.
Inland, behind the phalanx and underneath the surface, loud thuds rang out as something slammed against the ice repeatedly. Web-like cracks appeared where it had been hit, expanding with each blow.
The Deep Ones that remained on the fjord jumped toward the ice soldiers and commenced their attack, swiping at their faceless heads and putting the first row on the defense.
Frozen shards flew through the air as a huge fist bashed through the ice. From the hole that now exposed the tunnel beneath, more Deep Ones poured through, coming up onto the fjord and flanking the back of the phalanx. Amid the groups of green fishmen, a sickly purple one emerged from the freezing water. It was decidedly bigger than its brethren, by at least eight or nine times.
Although she had only witnessed it briefly within the yellowed pages of the Necronomicon, Elsa immediately recognized the monster: Father Dagon, high priest of the Deep Ones.
"Maintain your positions! Lines nine and ten, fall back and engage!"
The two back rows of the phalanx obeyed their queen and turned around to do battle with their aquatic rivals, throwing their pikes at them and drawing their swords, going on the offensive.
Elsa could not let the formation be broken up. She waved her hand and re-sealed the ice that the beasts had bored through, cutting off their forces and limiting them to the front of the battlefield.
Elsa's eagle sent several sharp feathers raining down at the Deep Ones. As she watched them be slashed to ribbons, she realized that they were not simply mindless animals. They displayed the ability to strategize, evidenced by the tunnel they had dug through the solid wall of ice. They had completely bypassed her army's formation and assaulted them from the rear, where they were more vulnerable.
With his vastly superior size and strength, Dagon ripped through Elsa's platoon as if they were made of fine glass. A single kick sent a grouping of them flying, while he grabbed another and crushed them to powder in his hand.
The queen held onto the back of her mount's neck tightly as she sent it into a dive. The bird flew downwards to Dagon at a high speed, ascending again just as its razor-like talons sliced through his eyes and across his face. Dagon roared, clutching at his eyes, blinded.
"Archers, target the large one! Fire when ready!"
From the cliffs overlooking the fjord, hundreds of ice arrows flew toward Dagon. Most of them found their mark, piercing his scaly flesh. The monster roared again, blindly flailing his arms about, indiscriminately hitting both friend and foe.
"TEKELI-LI!" the creature yelled.
Heeding their master's inhuman command, ten shoggoths rapidly appeared from out of the water. Defying gravity, they sped through the air. Four of them descended on the archers, smashing through them as they swept their tentacles around. The remaining six converged on Elsa. Reacting almost instantly, the queen snapped her fingers and they froze solid. She waved her hand, manipulating their frozen bodies to the bonfires that were still being tended to. Their remains dropped into the flames and started to burn.
"Tekeli-li."
As Elsa turned her eagle to face the remaining shoggoths, one of them whipped its tentacle at the snow bird's head. It grasped hold, and pulled hard, tearing it off.
The queen plummeted to the ground, her mount rendered useless. She conjured a soft, thick pile of snow, landing safely into it.
A cluster of Deep Ones snarled and charged at the queen, but were stopped in their tracks after she blasted them to bits with her magic. Rising to her feet, she looked up to the four shoggoths which still attacked the archers, and turned them to ice with a flick of her wrist. Like their comrades, they soon found themselves tossed into the fires, slowly burning down to a pile of ash.
Thinking on her feet, Elsa barked another order to her troops.
"Fire the artillery!"
The boom of cannon fire echoed around the battlefield as Dagon's skull was blown apart. Blue blood, pieces of bone, and mushy black brain matter splattered onto the ice. The high priest of the Deep Ones fell down with a loud crash, dead.
Seeing that their patriarch had fallen, the remaining fishmen screamed in rage and doubled their efforts, running headlong into the fray. The few that were still alive at the back of the phalanx were quickly cut down by the cold blades of Elsa's squadron, while the ones that rushed from the fore were stabbed through with spears, carved apart by swords, and bashed aside with shields.
With the water doing nothing to even slightly muffle it, a piercing shriek in the sea momentarily deafened Elsa. With her ears ringing, she looked to the shore and grimaced when she saw another immense monstrosity come up from the depths.
This beast was nearly twice the height of Dagon, and considerably wider. Across its chest were dozens of far more putrid, disgusting versions of the female orifice. Elongated, fleshy stalks extended from its shoulders and back, each one ending in a barbed tail. Its skin was a greyish brown, coated with slime, and its four black eyes were compounded, almost like that of an insect. Its dangerous maw was filled with hundreds of little gnashing teeth; the lamprey was the closest comparison one could make.
Once again, the queen recognized the beast from the Necronomicon: the high priestess, Mother Hydra, consort to the late Dagon.
Hydra's numerous rolls of blubber shook as she lumbered towards the waiting phalanx, the smaller Deep Ones following in her wake. She was rather quick for her size, pushing forward into the wave of Elsa's warriors. Their weapons easily penetrated Hydra's flesh, but it did nothing to slow her down; the thick layer of fat protected her from sustaining any real injuries.
Arrows sailed down from the surviving archers as the ground troops raised up their icy shields. Those who had lost their pikes in Hydra's skin drew their swords. In spite of their attempts to hold their position, the Deep Ones' matriarch plowed through their ranks. They could not hold them back.
"Clear the way! Let them through!"
The phalanx was finally broken as each soldier parted, moving to either side of the fjord and giving the Deep Ones a wide berth. The strange sea dwellers pressed on, ignoring the armada for their main target: Queen Elsa of Arendelle.
A wall of ice, twenty feet high, sprang up in front of the Deep Ones, separating them from their priestess. Many of them were skewered on the sharp ends of the icicles that jutted out from the wall, while the rest clambered over it just as Elsa's cavalry arrived.
The gargantuan snow warrior made its way down the mountain, its long legs carrying it to the fjord in mere seconds.
Elsa had not forgotten about the castle she had made with her powers more than a year before, nor had she forgotten about its size, or how it had the potential to be easily modified into a living weapon.
Arctic chains materialized over Hydra, binding the morbidly obese creature and holding it in place. Bile spewed from the gap in her face as she snarled at the queen.
The winter colossus stepped between its creator and the Deep Ones. Its huge axe grasped in both hands, it swung it down into Mother Hydra, splitting her in half and killing her instantly. Various innards spilled from her corpse, weird organs with functions one could only guess at.
Both of their leaders dead, and their numbers decimated, the Deep Ones turned tail and sprinted back towards the water.
"Attack! Don't leave any of them standing!" commanded Elsa. Her army sprang back into action, chasing after their retreating enemies. The bowmen resumed firing, the footsoldiers cut into fleeing fishmen, and the transformed winter palace stomped its feet down, leaving blue smears on the ice.
Suddenly, the Deep Ones stopped in their tracks. They all stood rooted to the spot, looking out at the ocean. They then knelt down on the frigid ground, their heads bowed as they started chanting.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
Even as Elsa's soldiers brought their weapons down on the Deep Ones' heads, they remained where they were, prostrated before the open sea.
"Keep at it!"
The Deep Ones still did not move; they no longer seemed to care whether they lived or died. It was as though they had all been put into a trance, moved to veneration by an unseen force.
The snow golems raised their weapons once more. Right as they were about to swing them downwards, they paused.
The frost army let go of their blades, letting them clatter to the cold, hard ground. The bows fell from the archers' hands, dropping into the snow.
Elsa had just enough time to get out of the way of the giant, falling axe of her transfigured mountain fortress. She looked around, confused.
"What are you doing?! Attack!"
Her forces made no movement.
"Resume fighting! That's an order!"
There was still no response.
The snow queen could not figure out what had happened. Only a minute before, the land had been rife with conflict, but now the opposing sides had ceased their war. She was about to start blasting the Deep Ones herself, when she saw why they had all stopped in the first place.
On the horizon, a few dark, indefinable shapes began to emerge from the waves. The water around them violently splashed upwards, swirling around in a white vortex. However, as they continued to surface, it became apparent that the shapes were megalithic structures, built from some kind of stone. Walls, obelisks, columns, and stairways soon began to reveal themselves, rising up from the depths and blotting out the horizon.
All of Elsa's years of geometry studies were useless in making sense of what she was seeing. The various structures, hewn from exotic matter in the distant past, did not seem to follow any rules of mathematics. Lines which should have been forming acute angles seemed to instead stretch onwards, refusing to converge. Patterns in the walls appeared as both projections and indents, going outward and inward at the same time. The stairs and ramps that were wrapped around the landmass seemed to go nowhere.
Numerous reliefs and hieroglyphs were carved around the cyclopean towers, depicting beings and events which no human on Earth had ever witnessed. Elsa wasn't sure if they were spherical or rectangular, but she knew that if she spent another second looking at it, she would go mad.
Arendelle's monarch looked away, trying to focus. But all that came into her mind were the words of King Klaus, words which she had heard only days before.
In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
A nasty realization found its way into Elsa's mind; she had just laid eyes on the corpse-city of R'lyeh, exposed once more after millennia of lying on the floor of the Pacific. And if R'lyeh had risen, if it was submerged no more, then that meant...
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh fhtagn nafl."
The Deep Ones raised their arms to the sky in anticipation.
Several walls of R'lyeh shifted, forming a vast doorway which revealed nothing but darkness beyond. Suddenly, from within, two enormous hands reached out, grasping the sides of the doorway. A wave of fear washed over Elsa as she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the thing which had slumbered within R'lyeh for countless eons, emerge: the Great Old One, Cthulhu.
The Deep Ones, Dagon, Hydra, even R'lyeh itself could not compare to the creature's terrifying visage; it must have been thousands of feet tall, the head alone easily dwarfing the North Mountain. Its bloated, ruined cathedral of a body defied all laws of nature. The tendrils and feelers that sprouted off the Old One's face seemed to have a mind of their own, writhing and twisting in the air. Its countless eyes glared out from its face, witnessing nothing yet seeing everything.
Had she looked at the entity directly, Elsa's mind would have shattered. As it was, she could barely maintain her sanity.
The colossal deity shuffled off of its city, stretching out its long, narrow wings and heading straight for Arendelle. The space around Cthulhu distorted and bent, folding inward on itself.
Shaking with terror, Elsa turned her back on the chilling sight. She had never seen anything so horrible in her life.
"Kill it! KILL IT!"
Mustering up every shred of determination, she called to the giant ice golem which still stood nearby. It picked up its axe and ran for Cthulhu. Influenced by Elsa's extreme emotion, ice spread further out across the fjord, extending past the cliffs and out to where the Great Old One was still advancing.
The golem did not even make it halfway across the path before melting into a puddle. The rest of the queen's army followed suit, dissolving where they stood. Elsa noticed even the frozen fjord starting to thaw as Cthulhu drew nearer.
Consumed by fear, Elsa ran back to the shoreline before the ice could dissipate completely. She did not stop when her feet touched solid ground. Instead she continued to sprint with all of her strength, heading as quickly as she could for Arendelle's royal palace.
Soon enough, the queen found herself at the castle gates. She wrenched them open and shut them behind her, sealing them with her abilities.
"And so you come running back."
The strange man, epaulets still gleaming as if they had been recently polished, stared back at Elsa. His cape fanned out behind him, and the jewels inlaid in his crown glowed with a weird light.
"I must say, even I didn't think you would last this long. But it's over."
The queen, panicking, stared back at him.
"What do you mean? What is all this? Why is this happening?!"
"I'm afraid this is The End, my dear. The candle has been snuffed out, the funeral bell has been rung, the flesh has rotted away."
The sky flashed, becoming a kaleidoscope of colors outside the spectrum; loathsome, disturbing colors that had no right to exist.
Elsa couldn't handle it. Her legs gave out and she fell to her knees. A sound, incomparable to anything she had heard before, seemed to echo through her consciousness, becoming an ambient noise.
She noticed a spot of red on the road beneath her, standing out amongst the grey bricks which made it up. She did not realize it had originated from her until the second drop of crimson fell.
Blood dripped from her ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, trickling down her chin and pooling into the crevices of each brick. Her heart racing, Elsa heard the secretive man's footsteps come closer.
At the edge of her vision, she saw what he had transformed into: a god of madness. The worm-like head, the oval-shaped mouth, the razor teeth, the skeletal torso and arms, the sharp taloned hands, the three spindly legs, it was all a perfect match to the illustration Elsa had made just a few nights previously.
"Poor little ignorant wretch. Shuddering and shaking, an inconsequential speck. If only you knew what it was all really about."
The thing's voice was raspy, harsh. It brought a single name into Elsa's head, the same name uttered by a group of ancient Egyptians thousands of years ago.
"Ny...Nyar...Nyarlat-"
She could not form the syllables properly.
The queen felt gnarled fingers grab her hair, wrenching her head upward, forcing her to stare up at the castle's outer wall.
"Now, gaze upon knowledge, upon truth. In its purest form."
Elsa breathed a silent prayer, desperately hoping that in spite of everything she had witnessed, a paternalistic God still watched over her. She shut her eyes, thinking of her sister. In her mind's eye, she and Anna built a snowman together for the last time.
A massive webbed hand scraped against the palace wall as it reached for Elsa.
Howard's pen stopped, dotting the end of the sentence.
"And...you never saw her again? Ever?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
Anna coughed, covering her hand with her mouth.
"I'm sorry dear, could you get me a bit of water? I would get it myself, but I'm not the young woman I used to be."
"Of course."
Howard got up from the chair and headed over to the small sink, turning the tap on and filling the nearby glass with clear liquid. He handed it to Anna.
"Thank you, sweetie."
She took a few sips and cleared her throat.
"You kids are lucky. When I was your age we didn't have nifty little things like this. Now, where was I?"
"We were discussing your sister," Howard replied.
"Ah, yes," sighed Anna, before she continued. "Lord, I miss her. It's been nearly eighty years since I last saw her. And my darling Kristoff passed only four years ago."
"I am sorry to hear that. It must be very hard on you."
Tears threatened to well up in Anna's eyes.
"It is."
She smiled, doing her best to maintain her usual self.
"But they're always in my thoughts and in my prayers. And I'm sure that one day I'll see them again."
Howard jotted down a quick note in the margin of his notebook.
"Your Majesty-"
"Oh, you don't have to call me that, dear. My son handles most of the royal duties now, an old biddy like me could barely be considered a queen anymore. Just call me Anna."
He forced a smile, his pen poised over the paper.
"...Anna...what became of the creature?"
Anna winced slightly at the mention of it. She nervously played with the end of a grey lock of hair.
"She killed it."
Howard narrowed his eyes in surprise.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I don't know how, but she managed. Summoned up a whole mountain range of icicles to kill it, she did."
'But...how did you dispose of the remains?"
"There weren't any. At least, not by the time we came back. Whatever was left of the thing had already evaporated into some kind of green mist. Not like it mattered much, it was still a lot of work getting the icicles taken down. And there were still thousands of those disgusting fish we had to get rid of. Those things smelled so bad, even the seagulls kept away from their filthy carcasses."
Howard removed his glasses and wiped them on the end of his jacket before putting them back on.
"And the city?"
"No sign of it. The thing must have sunk. Good riddance."
The young writer added another sentence to his notes.
"I just have one last question...what became of Elsa? If she destroyed the beast, how did she..."
Anna could not help herself. She buried her face in her hands and quietly sobbed.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"It's quite all right. You're young, young people are full of curiosity."
Anna sniffed, carefully reaching into the pocket of her dress. She withdrew a small, folded note.
"This was all I found, lying behind the castle gates. I always keep it with me, as a reminder of her."
She handed it to Howard, who delicately opened it to reveal the neat cursive of Queen Elsa. Silently, he read from it.
Anna. By the time you read this, I'm not going to be here anymore. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We were wrong. All of us, we were so wrong.
Having said his goodbyes to Anna, Howard stood directly outside the harbor, waiting.
The statue of Elsa that had been carved by Arendelle's finest sculpters served as a tribute to her. Trying to keep himself occupied, Howard read the statue plaque's inscription.
Our beautiful queen, ruling with a just hand
Our beautiful queen, ruling over the winter land
Our beautiful queen, you saved us with your gift of snow
Our beautiful queen, we are sad that you had to go
Our beautiful queen, we are now apart
Our beautiful queen, you still remain in our heart
In loving memory of Queen Elsa of Arendelle
"Hey, Mac! We're all ready, let's blow this pop stand!"
Upon hearing the skipper's voice, Howard peered back, seeing that the ship was prepared to leave. He soon found himself on board, watching Arendelle's main town. The sun was setting, and it cast an orange light over the fjord.
In Howard's eyes Arendelle grew smaller and smaller until the sun had set entirely. Small twinkling lights were still faintly visible in the night, but eventually they too faded away.
He made his way back to the small cabin which served as his quarters. It wasn't much, but it easily provided him enough space to write.
Howard removed two notebooks from his satchel; one was for field notes, one was for stories. He reviewed what he had gleaned from his visit to Arendelle.
It's wrong. The stars weren't fully right. If they were, star-spawn would have been there.
Howard had everything he needed, but he was reluctant to begin the story. He rubbed his temples with his hand. He felt tired, but he was unable to sleep; the dreams had seen to that.
Although he felt compelled to record the various horrifying events he had heard of and seen, he knew that this story was one that he would have to embellish. The world could not handle the full truth.
Taking pen to paper, Howard began to write.
The Call of Cthulhu
By H.P. Lovecraft
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.