"SHOW YOUR SUPPORT OF OUR RUSSY BRETHREN !
Starting from tomorrow and until the need for it stops, the Path of Stars will be holding a collect for the benefit of the refugees fleeing the troubles in the Federation. Tens of thousands of people have already crossed the border, and many more live in the region which has been secured by our brave soldiers – but even the latter need help, as they have spent the last years under the rule of the same tyrants whose incompetence and greed caused the Solstice Event.
Non-perishable foodstuffs, clothes, medicines and hygiene products are welcome. If you aren't sure whether something is suitable for donation, bring it along and our volunteers will help you. If you're interested in giving your time to help, then you are also welcome !
This collection was approved by the Ministry of War, which will supervise the transfer of all contributions to the refugees.
Remember, we have more things in common than we have differences."
Tract found on a wall in Berun, July 1st, 1926.
"This morning, Commander Zhenkov introduced me and the other officers to a strange old woman he called simply 'Grandmother'. He didn't tell us where she came from, and truth be told, none of us felt like asking. There is something about her that just commands respect and obedience.
At her request, we brought out one of the Panatseya afflicted and chained him to a metal bed. He let us chain him, but he was still struggling against his chains, his body twitching with agony. The Grandmother approached him and spoke a single word, and he suddenly relaxed and stopped moving.
She then took one of our scalpels, and started carving strange sigils into his torso. He didn't cry out, but then the pain of the cut must be nothing compared to his body breaking itself before knitting itself back together, again and again.
It took her ten minutes before she was done. By that time, the cuts had healed, but unlike normal injuries suffered by the afflicted, they left scars behind, red and vivid. More importantly, the patient's affliction receded, and within moments he was back to normal, his body no longer wracked by ceaseless mutation.
Not only was he healed, he also claimed to no longer feel the Calling to Moskva. The Grandmother told us that, thanks to the sigils, the power of the Dark Mother was now contained and could be used safely. We ran the patient through some fitness tests, and he displayed incredible strength, speed and reflexes, and a small cut to his hand healed within seconds. The Grandmother named him the first Okhotnik, the Hunters who will purge the beasts which plague Russy.
I have tried to draw the sigils in my notebook, but the paper caught fire before I could finish the first. Not that it's much of an issue : every single one of them is burned into my mind, and I feel I could reproduce them with my eyes closed. Which is what I and the other surgeons spent the rest of the day doing, tracing the sigils on the flesh of every afflicted. Of course, none of us are mages, but the Grandmother walked among us and calmed down each one before we got to work.
At the rate we're going, I estimate we'll have finished treating all the afflicted in a couple of days at the latest, leaving Commander Zhenkov with several hundreds Okhotniki. Based on the schedule he has set for our departure, we should be just in time.
At the Grandmother's suggestion, we have started requisitioning farming equipment and refitting it for use by the Okhotniki in melee. The weapons our engineers have made so far aren't elegant, but the Okhotniki can wield them with ease despite their weight. The Grandmother also carved smaller sigils into the metal with her needles, and said that these would help kill beasts.
No one disputed the point, ludicrous though the whole thing might have sounded. It is strange, how quickly we have all accepted her presence and authority. None of us dare to say so out loud, but I know we are all thinking of the same old stories, passed down from one generation to the next for centuries before the Revolution branded all such tales as superstitious nonsense.
When I asked her why she had come to us now, she said that the beast's roar (I assume she was talking about the Solstice Event) woke her from her nap, and when she got out to find out what had happened, she saw the mess we'd made and came to help. Emboldened, I asked her if she knew what was happening in the Dominion that caused their forces to withdraw across the frontline. She muttered something about 'that fool fox girl being up to her old tricks again'. I dared not press her for more details, as she didn't look pleased.
It is a strange alliance we have made, if alliance even is the right word. But needs must when the devil drives."
From the personal writings of Doctor Dmitri, Chief Surgeon of the Federation Army Manchurian Corps, July 2nd, 1926.
"THE END IS NIGH"
"THE BROOD RISES"
"THE PRIESTS LIED TO US"
"THE FEAST HAS BEGUN"
"THE OLD ONES ARE AWOKEN"
"ALL IS LOST"
"GOD HAS FORSAKEN US"
"BETTER TO SERVE IN THE HELL THAT IS COME THAN BE DEVOURED BY ITS DEMONS"
"SHE CALLS AND HER CHILDREN ANSWER"
"THE MONSTROUS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH"
Graffitis found on the walls of buildings in Francois, Albion, Ispagna, Akitsushima, and more, in the days following the Solstice Event. Police investigations later linked these slogans to a spike of suicides and violent, deranged murders, which involved mutilation and, in some cases, cannibalism. Upon medical examination, those culprits which were captured alive were shown to all possess low-level mana potential, and were declared insane in countries where it was applicable.
"Since what has now been named the Solstice Event, the Empire of Brazil's general mood has remained uneasy. While we are separated from Moskva, the source of the great disturbance according to both foreign sources and our own mages and mana detection arrays, by thousands and thousands of kilometers, there is no denying the grim mood which has descended upon the Empire.
As news from Russy trickle to the rest of the world, the picture they paint of the situation there becomes darker and darker. The death of the vast majority of Moskva's millions of inhabitants has been confirmed, and while the casualties suffered within the larger region might never be known for certain (given the utter confusion reigning in the region, and the loss of many official records with the capital's destruction), there is no doubt they are horrifyingly high.
Reporters on the ground have been allowed to join the military forces sent into the Federation territory to look for survivors and prepare the ground for an offensive at the capital. A compilation of several such articles, translated from Albish and Francois for the convenience of our readers, can be found on page 4, although we recommend you brace yourself before reading, as their content is quite harrowing.
[…]
Not helping things locally are the strange events which have started occurring across our country since the Solstice Event. While this paper has already reported on the hysteria which has seized certain individuals and turned them into doomsayers (with no less than thirteen such individuals recorded within our capital São Sebastião de Janiero alone, nine of whom turned violent when law enforcement intervened), it saddens us to inform our readers that more sinister happenings have also occurred.
Yesterday, the village of Cruzeiro do Tocantos, located on the edge of the Penthesilea Forest, was found completely empty of life by the merchants coming to purchase harvested wood. None of the settlement's two hundred inhabitants were to be seen, and according to the preliminary police reports, there are signs of violence – broken windows, battered doors, and the likes.
His Imperial Majesty Pedro III gave a speech yesterday from the Palace of São Sebastião in which he called for national unity and solidarity, and promised that all possible efforts are being made to ensure the safety of the people …"
Extract from the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Sebastião, July 6th, 1926.
"While the Solstice Event has sent shock waves both metaphorical and magical through the world, the hidden world of spycraft has been affected especially badly.
Since the Communist Revolution overthrew the Tsar and Jugashvili successfully defeated his rivals for the Federation's throne (though of course they didn't call it such, even though the General Secretary held more power than any sovereign this side of absolute monarchy), the Federation has ever attempted to spread its revolution to other countries. Using the writings of the philosophers they claimed as inspiration for their new regime, the Federation's masters reached out beyond their borders, making contact with sympathisers and sending spies to sow the seeds of revolution.
While there hadn't been any notable communist uprising linked to these activities, it was the opinion of secret services throughout the world that such was only a matter of time. Qin in particular was considered by most analysts to be the most likely to follow in the Federation's footsteps, but agents of all the Great Powers were concerned and active to prevent the spread of this ideology within their own borders. The Empire was no exception, as we know for certain that the Russy spies managed to infiltrate us deeply enough that they were able to locate the headquarters of Division Y.
However, with Moskva lost to the Solstice Event, the shadow networks assembled by the Federation's spymasters now find themselves completely bereft of guidance or support. While nations have risen and fallen since men first started building them, this is still an unprecedented scenario, and one even our most imaginative analysts failed to account for in writing the Reich's contingency plans. Thus, we have attempted to evaluate the possible international fallout.
Although we have yet to confirm it, there are rumors that one Russy operative in Magna Rumeli had a mental breakdown upon learning the news, irrevocably breaking his cover in full view of half a dozen police officers by loudly cursing in the Russy language. Outside of such extremes, however, the most common reaction, at least among professional spies, has been to search for more information as to what has befallen Moskva, to see if any of their superiors – or anyone else knowing about their existence – might have managed to escape the devastation.
We expect some spies will simply disappear, or make use of their cover identities to continue living comfortably. However, the Federation has proven itself capable of producing surprisingly fanatical agents, and these might decide instead to turn to terrorism, and seek to avenge their fallen masters. To such unbalanced individuals, striking at the Reich in general and Division Y in particular would be very appealing, as they are likely to blame us for their superiors' own stupidity.
Given the current situation and the needs of Operation Gottesmörder, we will focus our efforts in preventing such interference in the mechanisms of the Reich."
Excerpt from a report by Imperial Intelligence Services, July 10th, 1926.
July 12th, 1926 – Western Russy
Günther walked through the ruins of the village, scanning for any remaining threat. Around the Puppe, the rest of the task force was doing the same. They had just finished killing the last of the Lycans that had attacked them when they had entered the settlement, and now they were checking for survivors, be they beasts or humans.
In the distance, Günther could feel the presence of the Dark Mother, and it filled it with a feeling it now recognized as dread. It was so large, and Günther was so small. The godling could crush Günther without even realizing.
But Kin Evelyn had been right. If they didn't do anything, the godling would crush them eventually, simply by spreading its influence until it covered the entire planet and there was nowhere left to hide. So they needed to help their friends and join the fight, even if they were scared.
Günther saw something in the wreckage of a building which had once been a house. It bent over and picked it up before straightening its Orichalcum shell upright. In its hand was a small spinning top, which it recognized from having seen some of the children in Castle Schwartzstein play with similar toys. It was of simple make, wrought from wood and with a bit of string still attached to it, but with a care that spoke of the love its maker had felt for the child who had played with it. It was also stained with blood, dried red covering half its surface.
Günther looked at the ground where it had found the toy, but there was no corpse from which the blood might have come. It tried to think of how this could be, to imagine the series of events which could explain the bloodstained spinning top in its hands. Its kind were not made for such things : it remembered nothing of the time before its awakening in Gehrman's workshop, its first memory that of the old man's smile as it tried to move within an unfamiliar body, but it knew that much. Yet still, it tried, slowly piecing together pieces of information until a coherent picture emerged.
It thought of the Progeny, the spawn of the Dark Mother which roamed this land and which it and the others were here to hunt. It thought of the people who had lived here, and did so no more. It thought of the child who must have held this toy before it, and of what must have happened to them for them to be gone, their blood on this small sculpted piece of wood, their body nowhere to be found.
Slowly, with the agony of revelation burning through a mind that was both so young and so ancient, Günther understood, and his orichalcum hands trembled with grief and rage as, on his face, the mouth Gehrman had crafted with such painstaking care in the image of his lost squad mate opened at last.
"I promise you," he said softly to the ghosts of the village's dead, forcing his words, the first words any Puppen other than his sister Evelyn had ever spoken, past the sudden obstruction in his throat, silver tears running from his eyes.
"We will stop this."
July 13th, 1926 – Western Russy
"What in God's name am I doing here ?"
Andrew knew the answer to his own muttered question, of course, but it still felt good to complain about it, even if only to himself. He was here because he had accepted the job when the proposal had come, on the basis that, out of everyone in the little underground press he and his friends were running, he was the only one with actual experience as a war reporter. And thus (hopefully), also the one with the best chance of making it back alive from what was shaping up to be the most dangerous region of the entire world.
Their ever-elusive sponsors had paid a pretty penny to ensure his presence here, on the newest (and, God willing, final) front of the Great War. He still wasn't sure how they had managed it, to be honest : as a citizen of the Allied Kingdom, Andrew wasn't exactly welcome in Imperial territory at the moment. Sure, technically he hadn't set foot in the Reich itself, but the old borders didn't mean much now that Moskva had gotten eaten by some unholy monstrosity.
But that was his mistake. The Reich wanted the whole world to see what was happening here. They wanted everyone to see what Elder Magic could do, to show what they could have done if they had so desired.
The reconnaissance group he had attached himself to had passed through over a dozen eerily empty villages now, with days-old bloodstains and broken doors and barricades a silent testament to what had happened. They hadn't found any mass graves, but that was only because the Progeny didn't leave anything of their victims behind to bury. The only corpses he'd seen were those of the monsters responsible, or 'Progeny' as the Imperials called them.
He still took plenty of pictures, of course. This needed to be recorded; the world needed to know what was happening in Russy. Once they returned to Tiegenhoff, he would send the negatives back home, along with detailed transcriptions of what he'd seen, so that his colleagues back home could edit it all into an article fit for print.
The images of the corpses would need to be put under a warning to avoid children seeing them, but the sight of the beasts should be enough to convince everyone that the Imperials weren't making things up to justify invading the Federation. Apparently, there were still some fringe elements making such claims, despite the mana readings still coming out of Moskva which could be detected anywhere on the bloody planet.
Given Andrew seemed to be the only Albish reporter in the area (there were Imperial ones attached to other reconnaissance teams, and he was pretty sure he recognized a couple of Francois ones as well, but no one else), this might even be his ticket back into the good graces of the 'proper' newspapers, Andrew thought ruefully.
Not that he was in a hurry to return there, not after quitting his previous job in protest over government censorship. Although, now that he thought about it, it sure had seemed like Churbull had changed his mind, based on the gossip he'd heard before leaving Albion …
July 15th, 1926 – Tiegenhoff, Eastern Army Forward Operation Base
Colonel Eric von Lergen stepped off the plane that had brought him to Tiegenhoff's brand-new airfield, constructed in record time thanks to the use of mage labor. There were ongoing efforts to connect the city to the Imperial railway network, but even with all the might of the Reich seemingly dedicated to Operation Gottesmörder, such things took time.
With his job overseeing logistics in Berun complete – or, well, complete enough that he could hand it over to other hands – Zettour had sent him to the new Eastern Front without hesitation. He was, after all, the Empire's foremost expert in leading combined Mythos and conventional forces against the various enemies of Humanity.
One day, Lergen would find a way to make the old Brigadier General pay for that. But for now, he had more important concerns.
The trip hadn't exactly been pleasant, but there was no time to rest, or get anything into his stomach beside a cup of awful coffee – God, he missed the Ildoan stuff. Within a couple of hours from his landing, he was standing in front of the Imperial headquarters, shaking hands with a man wearing the uniform of a Unified States General.
"Welcome to Tiegenhoff, General Hutton," said Lergen in Albish. "We are glad to have you join us here."
By express order of High Command, Degurechaff wasn't going to be the one welcoming their American allies to Tiegenhoff. They wanted the Americans to take them seriously, and while nobody who talked with the Major for more than a couple minutes could possibly take her for an ordinary girl, it was Lergen's face which had been plastered on the Ildoan newspapers.
"And we're happy to be here too," replied the American with a wide grin. "My boys were getting antsy sitting on their arses in Ildoa instead of getting to play with their new toys."
"I assure you, they will have plenty of opportunities to test them out," said Lergen. "Follow me, please. We have prepared an overview of the strategic situation."
It wasn't the first time the two of them had met, of course. That had happened in Ildoa, when Lergen had gratefully handed over the duty of overseeing the Kingdom to the neutral Americans while he returned to the Fatherland, where all he had to worry about were overdue paperwork and wondering what Division Y would get up to next, not crazy Albish mages who thought he was the reincarnation of some ancient evil.
General Hutton had struck him as very enthusiastic about being dispatched to Europa, or at least working hard to give off that impression. Given what the American newspapers had reported about the Wunderwaffen, Lergen couldn't imagine there had been a lot of competition to decide which General would have the dubious honor of leading the American contingent.
He hadn't had the opportunity to evaluate the General's warcraft skills, but he was hopeful. Besides, even if Hutton was a complete moron, he had still brought a lot of firepower with him, and that alone counted for something. The American convoy was made up of over a hundred trucks, reportedly carrying the superweapons which had been built across the ocean since the Wunderwaffe race had begun along with several hundred USA troopers as escort (the bulk of the American infantry having stayed in Ildoa, both to carry on their initial mission and to make the journey here quicker) and a whole bunch of technicians and scientists.
As Lergen and Hutton walked toward the command center, they began to unload the cargo, assisted by Imperial workers. Even with the Imperial Army's typical efficiency, it would take a few hours to get everything squared away, which should be enough time for Lergen to go over the strategic overview with Hutton and discuss how their respective superweapon researchers should interact.
It wasn't as if they could avoid it, state secrets or not. They needed to have a good idea of what the American superweapons were capable of in order to plan Operation Gottesmörder properly, and there was no one better suited to understanding that kind of stuff than the Director of Division Y, who could then translate it into standard Imperial for Lergen (and come up with an actual battle plan he would then have to pass as his own invention for the rest of the world, again). The idea of letting Degurechaff meet whoever was in charge of the American version of Division Y was slightly terrifying, but far less so than the thought of having to introduce her to General Hutton.
… come to think of it, did the Imperial Military Academy teach Albish ? He knew Degurechaff spoke the language with a level of fluency that would surprise anyone who didn't know her, but he wasn't sure when she'd learned it. Of course, this was certainly the least of all the disturbing things about Division Y's Director.
July 15th, 1926 – Tiegenhoff – USA Expedition Camp
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn't help the childish glee that rose in me at the sight of the giant robot towering over the section of Tiegenhoff which had been given to the Americans. Maybe it was the Japanese boy in me, but there was just something awesome about the sight of who knew how many tons of metal being shaped in the form of a giant humanoid, knowing that, in defiance of all the engineering reasons which made the shape supremely impractical, it would still move with deadly intent.
Yes, the Hünen technically qualified too, but I had seen what was inside their metal shells : they were more akin to eldritch cyborgs than giant robots. Besides, at twenty meters, the American mech was around two meters taller than Division Y's own giant warmachines, though I didn't know enough about its capabilities yet to know whether it was more dangerous or not. It wasn't ready for battle yet : several technicians and engineers were working hard over it, getting the last pieces out of the trucks in which its disassembled bulk had been stored for transport and putting them into place.
While Colonel Lergen had welcomed them officially and started talking strategy with their General, it was up to me to liaise with the eggheads of this 'Research Group 51', whose creations the Americans were confident could match up to the Progeny.
With the sun having set down over Tiegenhoff, I was striding into the camp, Visha was at my side. Like me, she wore tinted glasses to conceal the transformation of her eyes, a result of drinking my blood during the liberation of Bovariastadt. They suited her, I thought, although I couldn't help but cringe slightly at the realization we were both, effectively, wearing sunglasses at night. At least that hadn't yet become a cliché in the popular consciousness, and we both had good reasons for them.
Since she'd drunk my blood along with taking her second dose of Endlose Nacht, Visha's eyes had become completely, uniformly black. The contrast with her pale skin was quite striking, and her vision, already enhanced by her transformation into an Untote, had become even better. But there was no way to pass the change off as anything natural. Sure, as a member of Division Y with the organization's emblem proudly displayed on her uniform, nobody would dare give her grief for it, but I still felt it best to conceal the growing inhumanity of our soldiers from the common trooper. And, obviously, that went double for our new American friends – or 'friends', as the case may be.
I didn't think the Americans were going to turn on us while the threat of the Progeny was on the horizon, but I wasn't foolish enough not to realize that the reason their superweapons were here in the first place was to keep us in check. Which, of course, made perfect sense from the perspective of the Unified States, and since they'd helped us out by taking care of Ildoa everyone had come out of our diplomatic exchanges happy thus far – well, except for the Albish, but who cared about them ? That crazed wizard of theirs had nearly completely ruined their international reputation with his antics.
In any case, while the Americans were our allies against our common foe, they were clearly going to use this opportunity to get as much information about Division Y as they could, and it behoved us to do the same to them. Given what I knew of the Unified States' war potential once the country got started, though, I really, really didn't want them to declare war on the Empire.
Which meant that it was in everyone's best interests for this first meeting between the heads of our nations' respective research programs to go as smoothly as possible. I put on my best smile as a gentleman in a labcoat walked briskly toward us. It was a look I was used too, of course, but there was something about his face that seemed vaguely familiar.
"Hello !" he greeted us. "I am Nicol Teslus, chief researcher of Research Group 51."
"Nice to meet you, Professor Teslus," I replied, shaking his proffered hand. "I am Major Tanya Degurechaff, Director of Division Y."
If he was surprised by my youthful appearance, the mask which covered half my face, or the long-sleeved uniform I wore despite the relative warmth of the summer night, he showed no sign of it. I had only known him for five seconds, and I could already tell he was of that breed of scientists who are entirely dedicated to their research, with little time for social niceties. I had worked with plenty of those in my time as Director of Division Y, and so long as he didn't cut corners on safety, I didn't anticipate any problem with working with him too.
Teslus. The name sounded familiar, for some reason … Ah. So this was the local equivalent of Nikola Tesla, then, the famous inventor who, in my old world, had ended up running afoul of Thomas Edison's savvier business practices. It seemed he'd been more successful here, given that we were surrounded by the fruits of his genius.
Then, all of a sudden, I remembered an old bit of pop culture, which claimed that Nikola Tesla had been the inspiration for Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep. For one moment, I wondered if I had just shaken hands with the earthly avatar of the 'Being N' whose existence we'd theorized after debriefing the Albish mages involved in the raid on Remula. But surely not. If that were the case, I would've felt something, or any of the supersoldiers resting at the base before going back out to hunt Progeny warbands would've.
Nevertheless, I resolved to be careful around this man. Even without my crazy theory, Teslus was still clearly someone important to the American effort to match Division Y.
"You're here to get a look at our devices, yes ?" he asked.
"Exactly," I nodded. "Of course, I'll give you one of our own in exchange."
"Good ! I look forward to it." He smiled, with all appearances of sincerity. "Plenty of rumors about your Wunderwaffen have reached the States, but hard facts are few and far between."
Though I was most interested in the giant mech – which, according to Teslus, was somewhat unoriginally called the Titan – we started our inspection with the smaller suits of power armor that were lined up inside a building which had served as a stable for the village's farm animals, before they had all needed to be put down as Being K's influence drove them crazy.
The Americans had brought twenty of these suits : not nearly enough to face off against the horde of Progeny dwelling in and around Moskva, but enough to make a formidable tip of the spear. Teslus listed off the durability tests they had done on the suits, but when he started explaining the resilience of their magic shields, I asked :
"I'm curious about how you solved the power supply issue, not just for these shields, but for the whole thing. Even an elite mage would struggle to keep these suits running for long, and you said you are using people without enough mana capacity to qualify as aerial mages as pilots. Did you figure out mana stabilization to build up a stockpile before deployment ?"
That had been one of the goals of Elenium Arms with their research into multi-core computation orbs, before that poor bastard Schugel had been mind-controlled by Being X and blown the whole thing to pieces. Their notes, which we'd used to create the D-24 dual-core computation orb, suggested that they had been on their way to success, but a triple or quadruple core was required to successfully run the stabilization formulas, and I'd thought that feat of engineering beyond anyone – except for Schugel under the influence of Being X, but the Trinity's Tear had been a cursed relic, not a real design.
If the Americans had cracked it in so little time – since from what Teslus had let slip so far, I was pretty sure Research Group 51 hadn't existed before we had started throwing our Wunderwaffen at the enemies of the Empire – then they were truly a force to be reckoned with.
"Oh, no," Teslus waved off. "Nothing like that. Though I do believe you'll find this even more impressive. This is the T-Engine, and once kickstarted with an initial jolt of mana, it draws power directly from the universe's submanifold dimensions …"
From there, he trailed off into incomprehensible technobabble, but a few keywords jumped out at me. When I managed to piece together what that meant, I couldn't stop myself from exclaiming out loud :
"You figured out a way to extract Zero-point energy ?!"
"Is that what you call it ?" Teslus blinked, before widening his eyes : "Wait, do you mean that the Reich has this technology as well ?"
"No, no we don't," I immediately denied. "Some of our experts theorized it was possible, but after that avenue of research cost us an entire wing of our headquarters and everyone inside it, it was shut down. But you managed to make it work ?"
The Professor whose name had been lost along with the northern wing of Castle Schwartzstein had theorized that, through careful and limited usage of Projekt V, such a thing as Teslus was describing might be achieved. It was from going over his papers after the disaster that I'd gotten the half-baked knowledge which had let me recognize what Teslus was talking about.
"Ah, I can see how that could happen," the (clearly mad, if he dabbled in such things that even Division Y shirked from) scientist nodded thoughtfully. "Thankfully, we didn't have any such incident while developing the technology. It's only recently that we've become able to teach people to build the critical components without my direct intervention, and we haven't had any issue with the process."
"If I may ask," I said cautiously, "how did the idea for the T-Engine come to you ? Division Y has its own sources of inspiration for our Projekte, but they aren't exactly reproducible."
"Oh, that's a story and a half," he laughed. "Believe it or not, but the idea first came to me while I was drunk."
"Drunk," I deadpanned, already not liking where this was going.
"Yes," he nodded, his smile turning self-deprecating. "Another of my business ventures had failed to take off. Looking back on it now, I can see why it didn't work out, but at the time I felt terrible about it. So I retired to my appartment, and proceeded to get drunk and mope in peace."
"I thought alcohol was illegal in the States ?" I asked, vaguely remembering reading something about the Prohibition in international newspapers at some point.
"Production and sale of alcohol are illegal," he immediately replied with a wry grin. "Private ownership and consumption, on the other hand, are still allowed."
Behind me, I heard Visha giggle.
"Of course they are," I sighed, before trying to bring the conversation back on track : "So, you got drunk using your own carefully husbanded supply. Then what happened ?"
"Well, I think my supply might have gone bad without me noticing," he admitted. More likely, he had purchased a bad batch from the local bootleggers, but I wasn't going to press him on it. "Next thing I knew, I was undergoing what I can only describe as revelation. I saw how magic and traditional physics were one and the same, how the building blocs of the universe were carefully arranged …"
He paused for a second, his eyes looking at something only he could see, an expression on his face I was familiar with, having seen it on many researchers before – usually right before I had to come down on them and force them to follow proper safety protocols.
"And then I blacked out," he continued abruptly.
"I'm sorry ?" I blurted out, caught off-guard.
"I blacked out," he repeated, not sounding even slightly ashamed of his retelling. "When I woke up, I had the mother of all headaches, and there were sheets of paper covered in equations all over the room. It took me several weeks to make sense of them and piece back together the understanding that had seemed so clear in that moment, but I managed it. A few weeks later, an agent of the government knocked on my door to ask if I wanted to work for the country, in light of, well, what was happening in Europa at the time. With the budget of Research Group 51, I was able to make my notes into reality."
Well, that was … surprising, but not too worrying. If Teslus had been influenced by a Mythos entity – be it Being X or another of his kind – then he didn't seem to have been driven anymore crazy than he'd already been. Since he'd shaken my hand without starting to rant about the Glory of the Lord and demanding me to repent, I was fairly confident my old nemesis didn't have anything to do with him.
And if it was another entity, then perhaps the alcohol had messed up whatever brainwashing it had attempted. Of course, we'd still need to be careful handling this going forward.
"Once all this unpleasantness is over, we really must arrange a technological exchange," I told Teslus sincerely.
Division Y had come up with civilian uses for our own inventions, but I had to admit nothing we'd found approached this scale. Of course, getting the secrets of the T-Engine from the USA would be like pulling teeth from a dragon. And even if the diplomats managed it, I fully intended to have Division Y's scientists check Teslus' notes thoroughly, to ensure this miraculous device wasn't another trap like the infinite food supply which had ensnared the Federation's leadership.
But the potential of it all … This technology could change the world in ways I could only begin to imagine, so long as it wasn't smothered in the crib by established economic agents. My knowledge of the future meant I had a better idea of the wars, pollution, and climate disruptions the T-Engine could nip in the bud than anyone else on the planet. Well, unless there was some genius somewhere working on proving the effects of greenhouse gas, blissfully unaware of how ruthlessly that truth would be suppressed by the fossil energy magnates.
I shook my head. One crisis at a time. Saving the world from climate change would have to wait. Right now, I needed to focus on saving it from the Progeny and the Dark Mother.
"That will be something for our countries to decide," replied Teslus. "For now, let me show you our death ray !"
As Visha and I followed him toward a section of the camp that was surrounded by a cordon of nervous-looking USA soldiers, I reflected that these words most definitely shouldn't be spoken with such a wide smile.
July 18th, 1926 – Moskva, the Lair of the Dark Mother
It has no name but that which the slave-sparks have bestowed upon it, insignificant minds trying to comprehend the divine. Over the many aeons, it has had many names, words from languages that have been dead for longer than the stars have burned in the skies of this world it now find itself in.
Now the slave-sparks call it the Dark Mother, a vain attempt to place it within their concept of motherhood, of gender, of life and death. But it is not bound by any of these things.
It is not a warrior or a weapon. Once, in an age only now remembered by those few slave-sparks that grasp so far beyond their station, it was a tool, used by its creators to bring life to their domains. Its essence quickened on countless worlds, creating new playthings and tools for its masters, theirs to shape further as they saw fit. It provided them the base clay from which they wrought their works.
Its masters are silent now. It has no orders to follow. But it does not need them, because it is made for only one purpose. Though the method was unusual, it was brought out of the not-space where it is stored in-between duties. And this, to what the slave-sparks would foolishly call its mind, can only mean one thing.
It must bring new life to this world. Existing lifeforms must be remade according to the antediluvian templates stored within the immensity of its being. The work will take time, but time means nothing to it. It is here because it is here, its presence extending backward through the slave-sparks' linear perception of time to ensure it will be called.
The paradox of it all means nothing to it, nor did it make a conscious decision from within the not-space. It is here because it is here because it is here, and because it is here its largest agents could be briefly called from the not-space less than two rotations of this world around its star ago.
It feels its agents dying, and this concerns it not. They are all equally disposable and replaceable. It learns from each of their deaths, seeing through their eyes as they perish, seeing the faces of the vermin which kills them and preparing new agents.
In the distance, toward the setting sun, it can sense something different. A cold flame, shining amidst the slave-sparks. Something not of this world, a piece of an older one bound to a slave-spark that shines just a little brighter than the others around it.
This, it knows, is dangerous. This is an obstacle to its purpose. But it does not fear it, for it is incapable of fear. Instead, it simply directs its agents to keep away from it, until it has gathered enough strength to overwhelm the obstacle, just as it has done many, many times before.
And so, it continues, and in its shadow, the hosts of its agents grow, breed, multiply, and evolve.
Just as it was created to do by its slumbering makers.
AN : All the players are moving into position. Soon, the greatest battle of the age will begin, while more hints about what's going on behind the scenes are revealed.
I had fun with the Brazilian newspaper extract, since as far as I know, Not!Brazil is never mentioned in the LN/manga/anime. IRL, the country wasn't an Empire by 1926, but after a brief look at how the transition happened I found it wouldn't take a lot to keep the Empire going (like, say, a corps of aerial mages loyal to the very popular Emperor over the leaders of the military coup). I am sure those of you who know more about Brazil's history than I can come up with a more elaborate explanation for the differences between timelines (and if you do, I would love to read it in an Omake written in the style of an extract from an in-universe history book).
Oh, and something is making people disappear without a trace in the vicinity of the Not!Amazonia Forest. That's probably nothing to worry about.
There is a reason I never actually used the name of Shub-Niggurath in this story to describe Being K : it's because it is not the Black Goat of the Forest With a Thousand Young. Several chapters and months ago, I mentioned that while things look like the Cthulhu Mythos, this story actually uses a different cosmology, which I constructed in an effort to fit the Youjo Senki setting. You will note that while Tanya mentioned the Dark Mother reminded her of Shub-Niggurath, nowhere in the story is it actually written that the Dark Mother IS Shub-Niggurath.
All will be revealed before the end of the story, I promise, but until then, I look forward to your wildest theories regarding Being X, Being K, the Denkmaschine, the Not-Man, and the true nature of the Mythos in general.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter.
Zahariel out.