August 4th, 1926 – Moskva, the Lair of the Dark Mother
Its infiltration agent has failed. The slave-sparks' leaders still live, and its largest agents are being deactivated one by one by the slave-sparks' constructs. Meanwhile, the weapon is approaching completion. It knows this, because it can feel the potential of its attack growing nearer to actuality : such is its power, it echoes through more dimensions than the slave-sparks can comprehend.
That is unacceptable. It considers its options again, now with appropriately elevated risk and allowable sacrifice thresholds.
Despite the changes wrought by the largest agents available to it, its agents on the ground cannot reach the weapon in time. The slave-sparks have revealed several assets it was unaware of : this means they were deliberately concealed from its scouting agents during their march toward its lair.
It also implies the possibility that there are more yet to be deployed. The deduction is not unwelcome, merely accepted and taken into account as it continues to calculate the correct response.
There is no more time for careful probes to reveal the slave-sparks' full capabilities. The weapon must be disabled immediately. It examines several paths, considering each in turn with cold, emotionless logic, before selecting the one its operating parameters dictate to be the appropriate one.
This course of action will expose its primary terminal to harm; that is why it hasn't resorted to it until now, as the precepts which inform its every move require that its primary terminal be protected and able to continue operating. But that does not matter to it : all that matters is that it is the course of action its purpose dictates.
It does not panic, or hesitate : it merely acts. Once more, its mouths adjust their output, sending new commands to its agents. At the same time, the tendrils it has burrowed into the ground twitch as energy courses through them, going from its core to the breeding pods it has seeded across its lair.
The agents within these pods were created after it learned of the extranatural capabilities possessed by the slave-sparks of this world. They were meant to assist it in harvesting and processing them when its influence expended to the rest of the planet.
It does not matter. It can make more, and thus it will make more, once the weapon has been disabled and the threat to its purpose removed.
Blood.
It is everywhere around Grantz as he fights, flowing freely from uncountable wounds and corpses. The tainted ichor of the Progeny; the Mythos-charged blood of the Werwölfe and Lunarchs; the red vitae of the Allied soldiers. Even the Hünen are bleeding, the fangs of the Kinder biting through their armor and into the eldritch flesh beneath as the giants battle, their blows adding to the quaking of the earth. No matter its source, all of it flows down onto the earth, turning it into a repugnant mud.
Never before has Grantz been more in tune with his inhuman self. He is in his Phantom shape, fighting against the Progeny alongside the rest of his pack, all of them moving with the unity of purpose made possible by the strange link that exists between Werwölfe and that the researchers still haven't figured out.
He has lost count of how many Lycans he's killed since the battle began. The Satyrs are easier to keep track of thanks to their rarity – he's slain seven of the leading horrors today, each more hideous and cunning than the last. Fortunately, the sheer volume of blood being spilled and the pressure of the battle mean that the Satyrs don't have time to play their mind-bending tricks – and without those, they're just smarter beasts.
With claws and blades of bone, he cuts and cuts and cuts, howling his defiance of the Dark Mother. He has taken wounds which would have killed a human a dozen times already, but they've all regenerated, leaving nothing but the memory of pain behind – and there is no time to dwell on that.
The carefully ordered lines of defense are nothing but a blur now. Iron death still rains from above upon the Progeny horde, but since the Kinder began their advance, more beasts have made it through the killing field, and there's no more time for orders and discipline. There is only the killing, only butchering all the enemies around him with extreme prejudice before following the rest of the pack toward the next greatest concentration of Progeny nearby.
Facing an enemy like the Progeny without any civilians or anything important to keep intact nearby, the Werwölfe are going all-out, holding none of their eldritch abilities back. An already bruised reality cracks and bends under the strain as they unleash their strongest attacks. Through the pressure of Being K in the distance, Grantz can feel the very fabric of the universe, already mutilated by the Solstice Event, straining.
He does not know what will happen if it breaks completely. He can guess, though, given what has become of Bovariastadt's skies, and he knows for certain that's not something they want to happen here and now, even if the part of him that wasn't born on this world is strangely curious about the possibility, under the fear it feels for the Dark Mother.
Yet still, Grantz does not hold back, because the alternative is letting Being K win, and that is even worse. He can only fight, and the part of him that is still the human teenager who hid his fear behind bravado as his unit was shipped off to the Western Front, silently prays to any God who might looks upon Mankind kindly for help.
Something not of the pack approaches, cutting through the horde of Progeny. A warrior, his white body almost completely covered in ichor. Grantz recognizes him : Günther, one of the Puppen, second of their kind to speak. The Mythos-built automaton isn't speaking now : his orichalcum face is a mask of rage as he cuts down the Lycans trying to swarm him with his glaive.
The Werwölfe move around Günther like water flowing around a stone, keeping clear of him while preventing him from being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
The sky goes dark, but it isn't like what happened on the Rhine, during that final battle between Francois and the Reich where the Eikons were deployed in Lugo's last, desperate gambit, and the Untoten partook of the Endlose Nacht for the first time. Because the clouds which cover the sun aren't clouds at all, but bugs – millions, billions of bugs.
Locusts, the scouting reports have named them. A swarm that could devour the whole of the Allied Forces, if given the chance.
There is nothing Grantz can do about them. As a Phantom-subtype Werwolf, he doesn't have any abilities which can affect the swarms. And even the Werwölfe who do have such powers, like the Efreet subtype, are far too few and limited to make any real dent in the Locusts' numbers.
But that's fine. If Being K thinks they didn't plan for this, then it doesn't understand Division Y at all – which, Grantz ponders as he cleaves another Lycan in half with his claws, one might say is the entire point of the Division in the first place.
Within moments, he feels it in the sky : dozens of sudden mana flares, burning bright and hot, as the aerial mages of Division Y and those pulled from the entire Reich for Operation Gottesmörder finally join the fray after being held back for most of the battle. And among them, one especially powerful signature : Captain Weiss, mightiest of Division Y's aerial mages, second in power only to the Director herself.
A rain of ash and burned Locust corpses begins to fall on the battlefield, adding another layer to the unholy stench that fills the air. By now, Grantz knows, the Imperial soldiers will be putting on their gas masks : there is no way of knowing what the effect of ingesting Locust ash might be, but no one is interested in finding out the hard way.
The Werwölfe, however, are unaffected, their eldritch biology proof against such contamination. And so they keep fighting, keep killing, and – more often than ever before – keep dying, too. Grantz sees men he's fought alongside since the Rhine fall, overwhelmed by the Progeny, clawing at the beasts until their very last breath.
He knows this might very well be his own fate, before the end. But his duty is stronger than his fear – or perhaps it is the bloodlust of the monster in him, the sheer, savage joy of battle.
In the end, it matters not. All that matters is that he fights, and in doing so fulfils his part of Operation Gottesmörder.
Fire.
The crimson inferno is all around Weiss as he flies into the swarm of chittering Progeny, drawing every ounce of energy he can from the Ritual of Correspondence. His shield, which uses a spell formula specifically designed for this type of situation, is proof against the Locusts : every insect which comes into contact with it burns and dies. But it only cover a small area around him : the bulk of his killing is done through the attack spell he's continuously casting, pouring every bit of strength he has into his D-24 computation orb.
An ordinary orb would have burned out from the amount of mana he's throwing around long ago, but the dual-core nature of the D-24 makes it far more resilient. Even so, Weiss can tell he's dangerously close to overheating the device. He has a couple of spares on him – this isn't the time to be stingy with resources, and the Major made sure to empty their stockpiles for the battle – but changing the orb embedded in his prosthesis in the middle of a fight is something he would rather avoid. He has practised the manoeuvre before, but never while surrounded by swarms of flesh-eating insects driven by the malevolent will of an alien deity – the Major's training is harsh, but not that harsh.
Weiss' body hurts from the amount of mana coursing through it. He can taste blood in his mouth, and smell his own flesh start to cook, burning before being healed, only to start burning again. Over and over, in time with his heartbeat.
But Weiss' parents raised him as a proper Imperial, and so the pain is nothing against his duty. No matter what, Weiss has to keep the swarm at bay. If it reaches the ground troops, they will be eaten alive, their weapons utterly unsuited to fighting this kind of foe. Thousands of lives depend on him doing his job, the job for which he was held in reserve until now, and through them, the success of the operation – and through that, the fate of the entire world.
Of course, Weiss cannot hold the entire swarm at bay alone, even with the ritual boosting him far beyond what any mage could achieve on his own. But he isn't alone. The other mages of Division Y, and every aerial mage they could bring as part of Operation Gottesmörder, are flying with him, letting loose attack spell after attack spell at the swarm. Never before has the world seen such a concentration of arcane firepower in one place, and the devastation they are unleashing is awe-inspiring.
Somehow, they are holding. Outnumbered over a million to one, they are barely holding the Locusts back. The air is thick with fire and ash, and Weiss can only imagine what this looks and feels like for the soldiers down below, subjected to this deluge of cinders.
Then Weiss' instincts, sharpened by his time in Division Y to a razor's edge, scream a warning at him. He doesn't think about it, merely moves, dropping his altitude by a hundred meters on reflex.
It saves his life, but only just. As he tumbles through the air, ignoring g-forces that would reduce his bones to powder through the use of spells cast with speed only possible thanks to months of the Director's hands-on 'training', Weiss gets a look at the thing that almost killed him.
His first thought is 'devil'. The creature is huge, nearly five meters tall if his eye for distance (something every aerial mage needs to survive long) is to be trusted. It is humanoid, with great bat-like wings and a long spiked tail. Its skin is the black of starless skies, and its horned head has no face – no eyes, no mouth, no nose, nothing. One of its too-many-fingered hands is held up in front of it, still cracking with something which is most definitely not mana.
This is new. He wonders if Being K started creating these fresh monstrosities in response to the Progeny's encounters with mages during the Allied Forces' march to Moskva, or if it was already breeding them for another purpose.
Weiss dismisses the question as irrelevant. Regardless of its origins, the creature is here now, and it isn't alone : he can feel the presence of a score others, their not-mana signatures shining like poisoned suns to his arcane senses. And at the same time, he realizes that he can no longer detect the signature of several of his comrades, who didn't manage to dodge the monsters' attack like he did.
Time seems to freeze as he looks at the monster and, despite its lack of eyes, it appears to look back. Then, with a burst of mana, Weiss hurls himself at the fiend, his orichalcum arm igniting into a blade of moonlight akin to the one which laid low the Heresiarch.
The winged horror dodges Weiss' strike, then ripostes with another blast of deadly energy – but the aerial mage is already elsewhere, darting around his enemy, subjecting his body to levels of acceleration that would kill him instantly if not for inertia-cancelling spells.
As Weiss dances in the air with this new horror, he hears the voice of the Director, speaking through an open communication spell :
"All mages, this is Major Degurechaff. Being K has deployed a new kind of flier, codename 'Nightgaunt'. All Untoten are to be activated immediately to counter them !"
Under the pain and the strain, under the grief and the horror, under the deeply, deeply buried fear, Captain Johann-Mattäus Weiss smiles.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Power.
The first taste of Endlose Nacht is like nothing Theobald Wüstemann has ever experienced. From a purely mundane perspective, the serum tastes awful : he doesn't think there are words in any human language which can describe just how horrible the liquid tastes as it flows through the input port of his gas mask, into his mouth and down his throat. Even its texture is somehow vile.
But then, the power hits, and it is glorious. Though he has no experience to compare it to, Theobald imagines this must be what countless drug addicts have pursued across the long ages of Mankind yet never achieved : a high that fills his entire being, that forces open his mind to the true Endless Night that awaits all things once the fire and furor of the universe finally dies down.
His veins feel as if ice water were coursing through them instead of blood. His vision is sharper than ever, his mask no longer restricting it whatsoever. The world is exposed in shades of black and white with perfect clarity, to the point he can count individual Locusts in the swarms – could, if he tried, see the individual drops of water making up the clouds which are gathering to fill the skies in reaction to so many instances of Projekt U partaking of the Endlose Nacht.
He laughs as he flies; he cannot help himself. Part of him, the part of him that still clings to Imperial discipline even now, notes that his laugh is more than a little deranged. But the other, greater part of him doesn't care, and exults in the power and the sensations it brings. He feels alive; more than alive, ascendant.
Still, he has a job to do, and whatever the Endlose Nacht is doing to him – whatever it is changing him into – he knows better than to disobey the orders of Director Degurechaff. Besides, he wants to see what he is capable of now.
The Locusts fall all around him, frozen mid-air by his passing, but they aren't his target. He seeks the Nightgaunts, these new horrors which threaten to upset the battle's delicate balance. Around him, the other Untoten do the same, bellowing their own laughs and war cries to the Progeny.
Theobald selects his target, a Nightgaunt that's being distracted by an aerial mage, and smashes into it with enough speed he feels several of his bones break, before starting to re-knit themselves. His hands dig into the monster's rubbery flesh, piercing right through its tough hide as if it were paper. It has no mouth, and so it doesn't scream, but it twists and jerks as black ichor erupts from its wounds. Theobald's face is sprayed by the liquid, and he licks his lips on instinct – where is his mask ? Has he thrown it away without noticing, lost to the frenzy ?
The blood of the Nightgaunt is as vile as the Endlose Nacht, but it is saturated with life. It fills Theobald's body with even more strength, boosting his regeneration to unprecedented levels. And a good thing too, because the Nightgaunt is far from done. It lashes back at the Untote with its claws, ripping his uniform to shreds and tearing out a sizeable chunk of his torso in a single blow. The pain is beyond anything he's ever experienced – and he has died before.
He screams and starts to fall, even as new flesh grows, apparently out of nowhere, to replace what he has lost. Within a few seconds, he has recovered enough to fly under his own power again, and he takes a quick look around, using his heightened perceptions to absorb the situation across the entire aerial theatre of Operation Gottesmörder. Already, he sees, another Untote has engaged his maimer.
He also sees Lieutenant Serebryakov, resplendent and terrible. She is the mightiest of the Untoten, a true queen of darkness and ice, by virtue of being the only one to have ever drunk the blood of their Director, who Theobald suspects wasn't fully human even before she partook of the Kosmosblut for the first time. Where the other Untoten need to work together to take down the Nightgaunts, she faces them head-on on her own, ripping their unnatural life from them with entropic spells which kill the very air they cross.
Theobald smiles in admiration, then flies back into the fray, laughing once more.
Fear.
It makes Eric von Lergen's heart pound in his chest as the Allied Forces' chances of victory dwindle. Yet, he does not weep, does not tremble, does not cower.
As someone who rose through the ranks of the Imperial Army's Personnel Division, Lergen has learned a lot about human psychology over the years. He knows that there are many different ways someone can react to a stressful situation – such as a battlefield.
Right now, he suspects that he has gone so far past being terrified that he's looped back to being calm. That's the only explanation he can think of for how he hasn't yet collapsed into a gibbering mess.
Due to the unnatural winds scouring the hill, half the command tent has flown away, leaving them exposed to the elements. Between the swarms of Locusts and the storm clouds of the Endlose Nacht, the pale light of dawn is completely obscured. The only sources of illumination are the electrical lights scattered across the defensive line, the brief flashes of M-912 discharges, and the distant explosions of artillery shells.
This might be what Hell looks like, Lergen reflects, although no Ildoan poet could have conceived of such horror as they face now.
In every battle until now, Division Y has had it easy. The Wunderwaffen have given the Reich victory after victory, turning the tide of battle across entire fronts. Even when the Eikons revealed themselves in Arene, Degurechaff's use of the Kosmosblut was enough to stop them. Every time the Empire has faced another Mythos-empowered foe, the planning and contingencies of Division Y ultimately won the day, from Kemet to Ildoa.
Now, the question is whether their contingencies will be enough to outwit a god – and Being K is a god, albeit a dark, abominable, false one. Even as he keeps listening to reports and shouting orders to keep their lines from total collapse, part of Lergen notes that, should Mankind survive this, religious debates are going to get interesting, in the Qinese sense of the term.
He keeps moving, Hutton doing the same elsewhere in the damaged command tent. They listen to reports spoken by breathless communication officers and reply with orders to move forces across the frontline, patching holes as they appear. They don't have reserves anymore : now they're moving soldiers already at the front, removing them from where the pressure is weakest to where the line is about to break. Soldiers in American power armor or wielding M-912s, occultists of Division Y wielding dangerous magics previously decreed unfit for use by Degurechaff, Werwölfe and Puppen : the Mythos assets of the Allied Forces move at the two officers' command, along with entire companies of regular soldiers, who have nothing more than ordinary weapons with which to fight the Progeny.
The death toll is appalling, yet it remains a drop in the bucket compared to the loss of Moskva's population, and less even than that next to what will happen if they fail.
That knowledge, the awful certainty of the consequences of failure, is what drives Lergen on, what pushes him to bury his fear and guilt and horror deep inside to deal with later. In this moment, he isn't a man : he is a Colonel of the Imperial Army, a cold-blooded machine processing the morbid calculus of war, whose orders send thousands to their deaths so that more may live.
He is, he knows, a monster no less terrible than any created in the halls and ritual circles of Division Y. He will bear that sin, if it means he can help saving the world. But as the battle continues, and the Untoten are unleashed against the Nightgaunts, the patchwork picture of the battle he holds in his mind doesn't look good. The team working on Projekt M still needs time; more time, it seems, than the Allied Forces can give them.
Somehow, the mind leading the Progeny is aware of the threat the Wunderwaffe poses to it : it was already clear when the beasts charged out of Moskva, but their movements during the battle confirm it beyond any doubt. Packs of Lycans and Satyrs keep pushing for the hill atop which sits the eldritch cannon, no matter how many they kill – and they have killed so many.
"Colonel !" One of the communication officers calls out, and Lergen turns to face him. "We're hearing something on an open frequency ! It's not using any of our protocols, but the voice is human !"
"Who is it ?" It can't be a trick – the Progeny have shown no ability to use technology whatsoever. But he cannot imagine anyone willingly approaching this nightmare, either.
"It's … they're saying they're from the Federation Army ?!"
What ?
It is not the first time Lergen is taken completely aback by something. In fact, one could say that he's become painfully familiar with the sensation in recent times. But this might just be the first time in a while it happens because of what he tentatively hopes are good news.
He throws a look at Hutton, who looks as taken aback as he feels, before answering :
"Put them on the line !"
Screaming.
With the infernal cacophony of battle filling the air, Commander Zhenkov needs to scream to be heard. Everyone around him is doing the same, adding their own voice to the chorus of warfare as they load shells into artillery pieces and call out adjustments to their aiming.
"I repeat, this is Commander Zhenkov of the Federation Army !" Zhenkov bellows into the radio of his command vehicle. It's fortunate that he speaks Imperial, although he's well aware of how bad his accent is – for some weird reason, he didn't have many opportunities to practice in recent years. "Can anyone hear me ? Respond, dammit !"
Ahead of him, the Okhotniks are charging into the beasts, while around him, every piece of artillery they managed to drag from Josefgrad is firing without any thought given to economizing ammunition. It has taken them weeks, and the last few hours have been a mad scramble to get there in time to do anything to help in the battle that'll determine the fate of the Motherland, but they are here at last.
Now, if only the damned Imperials would pick up the radio and answer him –
"Commander Zhenkov, this is General Lergen of the Allied Forces," finally comes the reply he's been waiting for, in a cold, controlled voice. "We hear you."
"Oh, thank God," Zhenkov breathes out in relief, before pulling himself together. "Listen, I have the largest Federation combat group left in the country with me. We have started bombarding the flank of the beasts with our artillery, and our infantry is charging them."
"The artillery support is welcome, but ordinary men won't be able to do anything to the Progeny but die without even slowing them down ! You need to call them back !"
Huh. The Imperial officer actually sounds worried about his men. How nice of him.
"Oh, the Okhotniks are no ordinary men, I assure you, General."
"… You have created your own supersoldiers ?" There is shock in the man's voice, now, and more than a little distrust, which he isn't even trying to hide.
"We have," Zhenkov confirms. Now isn't the time for secrets. "They've fought the beasts before, on our way to Josefgrad and then to reach this battlefield in time."
"How did you do it ? My apologies, but after what happened in Ildoa and the Solstice Event, I need to be certain your people won't suddenly turn on us."
Given that Zhenkov is reasonably certain the Solstice Event was caused by his country meddling in things it didn't understand, the Commander can understand the General's reservations.
"We had help. They all ate the cursed meat sent from Moskva and started dying when the Event happened, but our doctors managed to get the affliction under control. They are strong enough to fight the beasts, and use magical weapons too."
"… We'll speak of this in greater detail once this is over, if we're still alive. For now, welcome to the Allied Forces, Commander Zhenkov. Our lines are buckling : if your Okhotniks can take some of the pressure off, that would be appreciated."
"Understood. I'll keep in touch."
The connection goes dead. It is somewhat abrupt, but Zhenkov imagines that Lergen has a lot on his plate right now.
From where Zhenkov stands, he can just about make out the tide of the battle – though it feels less like a battle, and more like trying to fight off the rising tide of a stormy ocean. Looking through a pair of binoculars, the Russy Commander watches the Okhotniks push deeper into the flank of the bestial horde, and how the monsters react to their arrival.
It is immediately clear to him that while the beasts may individually be mindless, the enormous thing that created them and presumably commands them (and which he is trying very hard not to look at as it looms in the distance, amidst the ruins of the Federation's capital) isn't. The enemy host reacts as one to counter the push of the Okhotniks, diverting part of itself to face them like a river of tainted flesh parting from a greater flow.
He lowers his binoculars with a sigh, ready to get back to shouting at the artillery crew to keep them focused just one more moment.
Zhenkov turns, and – there. Sitting on the rocking chair where he first saw her in his command tent, even though he knows they left the piece of furniture back in Josefgrad, and nobody called him to say they'd seen her on the way here.
By now, he isn't even surprised.
"Grandmother," he greets her respectfully. Then, a thought suddenly comes to him, and he asks hesitantly : "Are you … are you going to get involved directly ?"
She smiles at him, showing her iron teeth. It is difficult to read her emotions, but Zhenkov feels that she is amused, if anything. To his surprise, he finds it vaguely reassuring.
"Not yet, child. I will play my part before the end, just like we all will. For now, this is someone else's time to shine."
Illumination.
Nicol Teslus can see the mysteries of the universe laid bare, and they are burning him alive.
The leader of Research Group Fifty-One is arms-deep inside the mechanical guts of Projekt M, moving parts and shouting orders to the Division Y personel in his native Imperial. He has taken command by virtue of sounding like he knows what he is doing – and, to no one's greater surprise than his own, he actually does. He was shown the schematics of the Wunderwaffe on the way to Moskva, was told everything Division Y understands about it. The fact that this was sharing national secrets with a foreigner didn't even seem to register : as long as there was a small chance him knowing these things could help deal with Being K, the Imperials were fine with telling him their secrets.
Now, so close to the core of the Wunderwaffe, his mind is being forcibly opened to a far greater understanding. Projekt Mjölnir is a wonder and an abomination. It is the heart of a dead god, and the destructive energies its lesser fragments unleash is the divine ichor it once pumped through what passed for the deity's veins. It is also alive, and it is trying to kill Nicol. He can feel it pushing against his mind, despite the protective equipment he is wearing. Maybe the suit is damaged, or maybe he is just too close – there is no time to investigate. All he can do is endure, and do what must be done if there's to be any hope of a better tomorrow.
Nor is Projekt M the only intruder in Nicol's mind. He can hear Being K, the Dark Mother, too, reaching out across the battlefield, reading the flow of causality and identifying him as one of the key gears of Operation Gottesmörder. Or maybe it's because his is the mind that conceived of the T-Engine, somehow made more open to alien interference in the process.
It is a fascinating question, really, but alas, now isn't the time to ponder it.
Regardless of how they manage it, neither of the entities speaks with something as simple as words, because language is a human construct, and neither of them ever were human. But Nicol, for all his ego and all the wonders he has wrought, is still a proud member of the human race, and so his frail, meaty, genius brain interprets the entities' intrusion into his mind as words.
[DESTRUCTION], says that which Division Y sought to bind within a Wunderwaffe. That single word carries a world's worth of meaning. It shows Nicol visions of unspeakable desolation, of entire planets burning in cerulean fire, of stars being devoured by their own flames and setting the cosmos ablaze. There is a hypnotic quality to the vision, a promise that all this beauty can be made real if he only free Mjölnir from the restraints Division Y placed upon it.
It makes Nicol's blood boil, and causes tears to leak out from his eyes. He blinks repeatedly to clear his vision – he cannot afford the impediment at this juncture. One mistake and Projekt M either won't fire, or will burn half the continent to the bedrock – and while that might be preferable to Being K's influence spreading, that's far from the ideal scenario.
[GROWTH], says the Dark Mother. The word conjures images of unrestrained proliferation, of endless consumption : a food chain eating its own tail, a cycle of predation that spreads further and further until it covers the entire world, absorbing all biomass before transforming into … into something else, something Nicol's mind interprets as … as a planet-sized egg ?
He ignores the vision and its implications, just like he ignores Projekt M's. The funny thing is – and he has to find it funny, because otherwise he might start screaming, and he doesn't think he could ever stop – Nicol is almost certain that, if it was just the blue crystal or the life-twisting horror trying to get into his head, they would have succeeded by now. His will may be strong, but there's only so much willpower can do against supernatural effects which affect the brain's delicate machinery directly.
"Projekt M is ready," he says into a radio that, thanks to some very heavy shielding, has managed to stay functioning. "Initiating firing sequence. All hands, brace for deflagration, and may God help us all."
Of course, there isn't a big lever to pull to trigger the Wunderwaffe. The weapon engineers of Division Y are far too clever to put such an obvious target in their design.
Instead, there are three different ones, each of them capable of activating the weapon on their own. At Nicol's command, three Division Y technicians make their way toward them, struggling to move in their isolation suits. But they are very motivated – Nicol doesn't think there has ever been a work crew more motivated in the history of Mankind, in fact – and they each manage to reach their assigned lever and pull it down.
Nicol wants to run, but he knows it won't make any difference. This close to Mjölnir, either the superweapon will work perfectly and there won't be any spillover of energy, or it won't, and there is no way he can run fast enough to avoid being annihilated.
So, for want of anything better to do, the chief scientist of Research Group 51 forces his eyes open and looks straight into the mechanisms of Projekt M through his protective googles, as if daring it to do its worse. And as the last of the gears turn, the final switch move into place, and the Wunderwaffe fires, Nicol Teslus realizes that he is smiling.
Cerulean light erupts, consuming his entire field of vision. He hears, briefly, the rest of the crew cry out, then he can hear nothing at all over the sound of a god's hammer falling down.
Hope.
It is a fragile and deceitful thing, but I cannot help but feel it in that moment.
From my position in the air, hands tight around my computation orb, I watch as Projekt M fires at full power for the first time in its existence. Out of everyone in the Allied Forces, I am likely the only one who can bear to look at it without going blind (everyone was given clear orders to look away, even though, with the battle very much still ongoing, that is a supremely dangerous thing to do).
We tried to calculate how powerful the blast is going to be, using the smaller crystals of the M-912s as reference, but even the craziest of Division Y occultists had to admit they were only guessing. At this scale, there has to be a difference of kind as well as size. We were reasonably sure firing the biggest gun in the history of this world isn't going to crack the planet or set the atmosphere on fire, though.
Under any sane circumstances, 'reasonably sure' wouldn't be good enough : there's a reason I sent the Projekt M's big crystal in the Black Vaults, and it's not just because it was driving the people around it insane. But, faced with a threat like Being K, it was still one of our more palatable options.
There is light, of a blue not found anywhere on Earth. It erupts from the tip of Projekt M and travels in a completely straight line, directly at the center of Moskva, where our scouting indicates the monstrous body of Being K is located.
To describe what happens when Projekt M hits its target as noise would be inaccurate. Sound is vibrations travelling through air, and the air itself is disintegrated in the path of the beam – not just decomposed to its component atoms, but utterly annihilated, in a way that makes a mockery of the law of conservation of matter.
Moskva is gone, and so is the horde of Progeny infesting it. The beasts which had already departed the city to clash with the Allied Forces are still there – by now, they are too deeply mixed with our troops, so that using Projekt M against them would have resulted in massive friendly fire casualties.
But Being K still lives. It writhes inside the crater, lashing out at its surroundings with tentacles as wide as tanks, turning already broken earth into dust as they slam into the ground seemingly at random. It is hurt, badly, I can see it all the way from here, and once I dispel my hearing protection spell, I can hear it screaming too, with an unmistakable note of pain in its alien voice.
But it isn't dead. We fired our greatest weapon at it, and it wasn't enough.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, the old verse echoes in my head, dredged from the memories of my past life, and I feel the pull of despair at the sight of our failure.
But I refuse to let it end like this. I snarl, turning to anger to banish fear, and finish the saying aloud :
"'And with strange aeons, even death may die'. Do you hear that, you monster ?! Do you hear that, Being X ?! Everything ends, even gods ! And especially false gods !"
It wasn't what Lovecraft meant when he wrote it, I know. He meant it as a warning that, even dead, the Old Ones would one day return, when the stars were right, and there was nothing Humanity could do about it.
But I am not a chronically depressed man living in an era without the means to address his many, many psychological issues. I am Tanya Degurechaff, Director of Division Y, and to me, those words are a challenge, not a warning.
I take a deep breath of recycled air, aware that I started shouting at the end there. I need to stay calm. Now more than ever, I need to stay calm. Screaming at the heavens has never achieved anything. Actions, not words, are what's needed here.
"Colonel Lergen, General Hutton," I say, casting a communication spell with barely a thought, "target is still up, I repeat, target is still up."
"I know, Major." Only someone who knows Lergen as well as me could pick up the undertone of regret in the Colonel's reply. "Then it is time to enact our contingency plan. I'm sorry it came to this, Major … no. Tanya."
I blink, surprised. I didn't expect such sentiment from Lergen, but then I suppose these are unusual circumstances, and he has always had a soft spot for me since the military academy.
"Don't be," I say, reaching to the injector hanging around my neck. "This isn't your fault. It isn't anyone's fault but the bloody Communists."
"Really ? What about Being K ?"
"Do you blame the water when there's a flood, or the morons who built faulty dams ?" I ask rhetorically. "However powerful it might be, I doubt that monster is anymore sentient than a common beast. Of course," I smiled, all teeth and no warmth, "that doesn't mean it mustn't be put down."
Lergen's answering laugh is short, but true. Briefly, I wonder : did I ever have a colleague who could laugh like that at a joke I made in my previous life ?
"You're right, like always. Good luck, Tanya."
Well, at least he didn't wish for God to be with me.
"I don't need luck," I boast, trying to convince myself more than him. "I have something much better."
Then I cut off the spell, before my brain can come up with something else to say to delay the inevitable.
I do not know what another dose of Kosmosblut will do to me. We are fairly sure that it will work like the previous ones and trigger my transformation into what everyone else calls the 'Lady of Stars', but we have only guesswork when it comes to the long-term effects. My first use changed my eyes, my second my right arm, and after the third, a full half of my body was altered.
Basic pattern recognition tells us that, sooner or later, my entire body will remain 'star-touched' even after the serum's effects ended, but we don't know what exactly that will imply. I can still use my transformed body parts without issue : will that still be the case, even after the last of my human flesh is lost ?
I don't know, and it terrifies me.
I take a deep breath, all too aware that it might be the last one I ever take with human lungs, and jam the injector into the side of my neck that's still made of flesh and not star-stuff.
And, once again –
I see –
EVERYTHING.
AN : Yes, I know, I'm evil for cutting things off there. I am also not sorry.
As some of you might have noticed, I am taking some liberty with the source material. To my knowledge, there's no link between the Nightgaunts and Shub-Niggurath, the Goat With A Thousand Young and obvious inspiration for Being K, in the original Cthulhu Mythos.
But really, by now I think it's pretty obvious that this story is more of a crossover with the general vibe of the Mythos than anything else. Besides, by now I think I have laid enough clues that whatever Being K is, it isn't an Outer God as defined in the Mythos, but something else entirely.
What, exactly ? Well, that's up to you to theorize about ! Right now, Division Y is too busy trying to kill Being K to spend time figuring out its true nature.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to your comments.
Zahariel out.