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Post By The Hooded Hood goes for the kill Fri Mar 18, 2005 at 10:08:09 am EST |
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#206: Endlessly Continuing Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Fourteen – This Time John Wayne Does Not Walk Off Into the Sunset With Grace Kelly | |
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| #206: Endlessly Continuing Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Fourteen – This Time John Wayne Does Not Walk Off Into the Sunset With Grace Kelly The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Caphan Archive Page Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse  Blind mad Azafroth spun in space, howling and gibbering, the size of a nebula. Now he was so close to awakening again and reordering the heavens so that the stars would be right his inhuman attendants had manifested, dancing and fluting in orbit around his immeasurable essence. Soon their revels would consume all reality. “I’m sorry,” Amazing Guy told the most powerful of the Fairly Great Old Ones. “You’re going to have to keep the noise down. There have been complaints form the neighbours. “What?” blinked Vaahir of Caph. “What did you say?” “I said you’re an idiot, Lord Vaahir,” Miiri repeated, as the two of them retreated from the beach that was rapidly becoming the spearhead of an invasion of tentacle-headed spawn of K’Martu. The great sunken mall where the elder god was waking had risen in the bay of the Lemurian stronghold. “I’m… no longer a Lord,” the young Caphan admitted. “I’ve been cast from my House. I’ve given up everything to rescue you and your slave-sisters.” “And did you ever stop to consider whether we wanted to be rescued?” challenged the green-skinned former pleasure slave. “I mean, full marks for obsessive bravery in the face of common sense, with extra credit for not giving up when you got handed the most terrible deal life could offer you, but while you were doing all your tactical research and elaborate planning could you have taken two minutes to find that Vizh and the Shoggoth are the good guys?” “You don’t know what you are saying,” Vaahir warned her. “Your captivity has broken you to their evil wills, and now you…” Miiri stopped running and Vaahir nearly tumbled over her. “Listen, ex-Lord Vaahir,” Miiri told him, “I don’t need rescuing. I’m not a slave now. I’m not owned by anybody.” “Zaahir’s brood! Cast out? But…” “Not cast out. Set free. It’s an Earth concept, in which a woman owns herself, and sets her own value by her skills, actions, and associations. I don’t need rescuing because I’m not in distress. My sisters and I were in sore need of help when we were bound to the Slimy Slaver Lovetoad of Frammistat Eight, but it was the heroes of Earth that rescued us.” Vaahir’s face darkened with anger. “You will speak to me with proper respect, woman.” “This is the proper respect for an idiot who has brought about the end of worlds and sought the murder of good beings because he was too stupid to see past his own narrow culture,” Miiri answered angrily. “Don’t you get it, Vaahir? You’re the wrong hero in the wrong story. I know you’ve done amazing things to get Kaara back, but they’re the wrong amazing things. CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Goldeneyed claimed us from the Lovetoad. Yo awarded us to Visionary. And Visionary treated us with more kindness and respect than has ever been shown to helpless chattels in all the tales I ever have heard, and if we are redeemed it is because he and his kin restored us with their care.” She calmed down and looked almost pityingly at the Caphan. “If you’re looking for the hero in this story, it’s him, not you.” The panic was spreading in the streets of Paradopolis as the earth tremors didn’t stop. Across the city manhole covers were blown off and dark bubbling sludge welled up from the sewers. Shabba’Dhahha’Dhu, the Groper Out of Grossness, was awakening from its eons-long sleep, and already the night sky was twisting and becoming unrecognisable as its inhuman brethren prepared for their return. In the ruined shell of the old Griffon House the first feelers of the awakening monstrosity were already fully active, responding to the mystical assault that had temporarily vaporised them a few moments before. Ebony of Nubilia, high priestess of the Manga Shoggoth that had just been slain by the herald of the Fairly Great old Ones, shuddered uncontrollably like an addict going cold turkey and forced her will into the geometrical chalk circle she had drawn to hold back the Groper. For as long as she could maintain the mathematical formulas in her mind – and only that long – Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu was held back from lurching its city-sized bulk upwards and brushing away the city mortals had dared build over it. “Keep on doing that, old girl,” Con Johnstantine advised her. “If it helps, direct all that secret passion you have for me into the magic circle.” Ebony gritted her teeth, balled her fists, and redoubled her efforts. “What’s happening?” asked the third surviving person trapped in the cultists’ cellar. “I already converted this thing’s nervous system to superheated plasma? Why isn’t it dead?” “That is not dead that can eternally sell role-playing games,” scorned the Cockney occultist. “You did well to hurt it at all. Well in the now-it’s-noticed-us-and-is-coming-for-us-personally sense.” “I can’t hold it back much longer,” Ebony gasped, holding back her terror by the narrowest margin as the alien intelligence of Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu began to focus upon her. “It’s going to get free!” “If it does the rest will,” Johnstantine warned. “It only takes one to properly wake up and the rest will be there like Welshmen dating a new sheep.” He turned to Liu Xi, who was struggling to stay calm as new and ever more terrible concepts assaulted her senses. “How did you manage to use elemental control over a creature that isn’t made from normal matter?” “I don’t know,” the young elementalist admitted. “I think I shunted things through the void… That’s the nearest element to what they actually are. But I…” “So you reckon you could do it again?” Johnstantine persisted. “Reach out using the void as a translation medium and affecting the big tentacly baddie, I mean?” “I don’t know. It was so hard the first time. It’s so alien. And I can feel it arising. And there’s others. Lots of others.” Liu Xi looked up, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “I don’t think I’m powerful enough to burn the whole thing.” “If you were I’d be taking you out, not them,” the irritating Englishman warned. “No, that’s not what we need. We want to send the Groper here back to beddie-byes. If we enjoy having tentacle-free orifices, that is.” “If you’re going to do something clever and annoying, could you do it now please,” Ebony begged him. “I mean right now!” Johnstantine reached into his pocked and pulled out a small bottle of pills. “Touch these,” he told Liu Xi. “Can you sense the elements in them, how they work together?” The girl frowned and mapped the lattice of elemental connections in the white tablets. “They’re strange,” she admitted. “What are…?” “Can you reach out again to Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, but this time don’t turn his nervous system to plasma, turn it to this stuff?” “I don’t know.” “Find out, darling.” Liu Xi Xian concentrated, harnessing her fury and terror to her will, and pressing her mind out to meet the disgusting alien essence of the Fairly Great Old One. This was harder even than her last assault. That had been a rage of pure elements, this was a controlled blow. It was the difference between a sledgehammer left hook and a precise nerve jab. She pictured the utterly alien matter of the elder thing, and transformed it to the chemicals in Johnstantine’s palm. Then she retched and folded onto the floor to clutch her stomach and head. The Groper Out of Grossness lurched again, sending a new shockwave through Paradopolis. And then it quietened. The tentacles that flailed around Ebony’s protective circle faded away. Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu slept. Ebony crawled over the Liu Xi to check that the girl was no worse than exhausted. “We just stopped an elder god?” she checked. “What are those tablets?” Johnstantine shrugged and lit up a cigarette. “Flunitrazepam,” he answered. “Sleeping tablet also marketed as Rohypnol.” Ebony blinked. “Roofies?” she swallowed hard. “Are you saying we just date-raped Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu?” “You… protect your master, as you should,” Vaahir reasoned. “I have no master except when I choose one,” Miiri said. “That is the way of things on Earth. Or it was before you woke up monsters to slaughter us all.” Vaahir glanced at the beachhead of elder servitors and the disturbing city lighting up over the black bay waters. “That is surely the doing of your ‘hero’ and of the Shoggoth I slew.” “Wrong,” came a new voice from the undergrowth. Kerry Shephersdon stalked out to confront her kidnapper. “You’re pretty but you’re dumb. Your maggoty-faced pal just tried to carve me to bits with his sacrificial knife to wake up the Fairly Great Old Ones who sign his paychecks. Or was that part of the keeping me safe stuff you promised?” “Kerry?” Vaahir was disconcerted, uncertain of his purpose for the first time. “And Visionary! You seek to renew our balok gorn?” “I don’t own the girls, you moron,” the possibly-fake man told him. “This seems to be a plot aimed at waking up the elder gods and ending the universe, and you’ve just handed your pal Nyolurkotep a quick win.” “That’s exactly what the Shoggoth created this place to protect innocents from, and you have allowed it here,” Lisa warned. “You have got the idea that your advisor was secretly the villain of the piece, right?” “Petar Tyolanh? He saved me when I would have died of my wounds in the mines, and has guided my steps on the path to own Kaara, rescue you all…” “And there’s no possible chance that he was perhaps using you as a way of murdering the Manga Shoggoth that was preventing him from waking up these monsters?” Visionary scorned. “Boy, they say I’m dumb.” The tenth Caphan looked helplessly at Miiri, at Kerry, at Visionary and Lisa, out towards D’leyh, down at the monster-invaded beach. “I don’t…” he began. “I don’t know what to do.” “Me either,” admitted Visionary. “Really I’m wanting to just punch you for kidnapping Kerry and being a horse’s ass, but on the whole I’m thinking you’d break my neck and that maybe we should stop the world ending first.” “What can we do?” Vaahir asked. “What must I do?” Then the screams came from the archway further up the hill that was the portal to the outside world. The sales-spawn of K-Martu had found the way to spread themselves across the whole planet, and had discovered where Blair Atoll had gathered most of the refugees. “Hero stuff,” Lisa told the Caphan. “You’ve got a sword that chops up elder beasts, right? Bring it this way.” Great K’Martu slithered out of his cyclopean temple on the summit of the mall of D’Leyh, ready to announce the grand reopening of the sale of the sanity. But he was delayed by a few handfuls of twisted genetic matter and a small conceptual tangle with a rapier. It wasn’t a serious problem, although one of the organics was tangling stands of causality between the buildings to try and trip him up, another was wrapping himself in chaos to try and cascade change, and a third was using shallow manipulations of one of the lesser dimensions – time – to move about rapidly. There was also the acrid taste of Serious Matter. And then there was the organic package that was launching shaped carbon sticks at him. He decided to eat that one first. The chaos-clad being spouted concepts that shone neon green to K’Martu. He wasn’t sure what CrazySugarFreakBoy! was trying to say, but he sensed it was intended to be disrespectful. He folded space around the irritation, trapping the mortal where he couldn’t move inside one of the ninety-ton rock surfaces of the temple. The creature infected with Serious Matter reacted to this. It was using the material in an atypical way, harnessing concept to force localised changes on physical reality. Just now it was drawing on the associations of a metal helmet to channel bolts of electromagnetic potential through K’Martu’s substance. The elder god shrugged a dozen tentacles out to grab the annoyance and hurl him to the ground. The satisfying moment of organic splattering never happened though. The velocity manipulator got in the way, snatching the falling hat-wearer to safely, managing kinetic impacts with unconscious ease. Mildly curious, K’Martu reached out to the minds of the fleshlings, eager to pick them apart and see how they worked. The minor concept being was in his way, a shining sear of enthusiasm and optimism that seemed painful and obscene to the Fairly Great Old One. K’Martu tried to brush it aside, but it flamed in the minds of all these humans, keeping him away, maintaining their illusions. The least of the mortals fired another of the carbon sticks at him. He ignored it until he felt the searing mathematical equation carved on the shaft. He traced the concepts back to the intellect that was hanging back behind the archer, a brain seeking to comprehend what was happening in a limited human way. How could any mortal mind derive equations that could harm and elder god from first principles? Then K’Martu realised how pervading those probability strands were, laced thoughout the whole raised city, resisting the new order of reality. He suddenly realised that these were not trivial beings he faced, but the chosen last guardians of the dying order. He focussed his attention upon them, using physical manifestations of his tentacles to shrike at them. He caught up the one with the intellect and the defiant one with the carbon sticks, then sluiced himself forward to swallow the fast-moving one and the Serious Matter wielder inside his sludgy biomass. That left him free to drive the probability-monger insane. If the thought being tried to get in the way it too could be psychically rended apart. A wonderful thought assailed the rising god: nothing could stop it now. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” It was a question often asked amongst the Junior Lair Legion, but this time it was directed by Ham-Boy to the alien mercenary Squibb, in whose commandeered space-hopper the youngsters were flying towards risen D’Leyh. The reptilian bounty hunter looked up from the transnuclear weapon he was arming. “I’m trying to rewire a weapon that could wipe me out so badly my grandfather wouldn’t exist. No, I don’t know what I’m doing.” “Carry on then,” Fashion Accessory told him. “Estimated time of arrival, Zack?” Zachary Zelnitz, Hacker Nine, checked the monitor readings. “Almost there,” he reported. “Although technically there is someplace where there shouldn’t actually be any there.” “Fabled Lemuria,” Harlagaz breathed. “Tis the stuff of legends.” “Has anybody given any thought to how we’re actually going to deliver this payload?” Ham-Boy worried. “I mean, we’re trying to take out this Vaahir guy and his pet elder nasty, right? But we don’t want to blow up Kerry. Do we?” The Juniors considered this. “I think we don’t need to worry where to put the bomb,” Glory the mutt of might yipped as she checked the forward viewing screen. “Look at the obvious target.” “That’s Great K’martu?” Squibb asked, blinking at the first hazy images of the giant squid-headed elder god. “He’s huge.” He did a quick calculation. “That means he’s filled with an awful lot of treasure.” “Just like a piñata,” Fashion Accessory promised insincerely. “But you only get 30%.” Squibb nodded equally insincerely. “Of course. Trust me.” “We’re going to need to get this bomb right inside that thing,” Hacker Nine judged. “So if anyone has any ideas how…” “I wilt strap yon explosive to mine self and leapeth down yon felon’s craw,” Harlagaz suggested. “I art fairly sure I canst survive yon meganuclear explosion for the nonce.” “Or plan B?” suggested FA. “I think I know what to do,” suggested Glory, growling and gesturing nice and slowly so her team-mates could understand her. Lisa, Visionary, Miiri, and Vaahir arrived too late to help against the first wave of K’martu spawn that fell upon the refugees of Lemuria. The servitors of the elder being swarmed up the hill towards the plateau where the communal bonfire was maintained, thirsting for the sweet cerebral fluids of the hapless mortals. What they hadn’t realised was that the Shoggoth had been preparing his people for a timeless period to face and repel elder beings, and that Blair Atoll had access to fifteen cases of M16 A2/M203 Combat Rifles for special occasions. The spawn were more used to humans fleeing in insane terror and less used to being shredded to sushi by 350 rounds per minute of Teflon-point bullets. “Miiri!” Sayaana called in relief. “You’re alive!” Then she saw the party with the Caphan girl. “Master Visionary has saved Kerry! And… is that Lord Vaahir?” The tenth Caphan was looking round the battlefield with a sick horror. “This is my fault,” he recognised. “I have to do something.” He stared at the dishevelled, combat-stained refugees. “Where is Kaara?” “She… she ran off, Lord,” Deela answered, offering the traditional genuflect of submission. “Before the invasion began. She was… upset.” “She did not know you were alive, Lord Vaahir,” Philaana explained. “She had been told you died under torture, cursing her.” Vaahir went pale. “And she grieved to know I was coming for her?” He looked stunned. “What have I done?” “She was distressed because she thinks her worth to you is devalued by her ordeals,” Sayaana explained. “She was hard-used by Prince Aarmus, and her price was diminished by some slight traces of correction upon her back that cannot be erased. But mostly she thinks herself unworthy to be owned by you because she surrendered to her tormentors.” “But now she is valued more highly than ever,” Noona added loyally. “Each of us was sold to the Shoggoth for an emir’s ransom.” “I killed the Shoggoth,” Vaahir said. “What was his is now mine.” He heard the click of the M16 A2/M203 Combat Rifle by his ear before he felt the muzzle at his temple. “What?” asked Blair Atoll dangerously. Fortunately just then the second, much larger wave of K-Martu-spawn gibbered up the beach to attack them. “Yo is to be worrying,” the genderless thought being admitted as the space to manoeuvre from the flailing tentacles of Great K-Martu got less and less. “Yo cannot see cute Lair-friends, or cute Kerry. Yo cannot see way out of this.” “Don’t give up,” Dancer begged her. “If you don’t believe then it won’t be possible. And if it’s not possible I can’t make it happen.” “All of others are to be trapped under skin of uncute K-Martuing,” Yo warned. “Yo is thinking we are not to be lasting long!” “I hated Thelma and Louise,” Dancer answered. “Just keep fighting. Something will turn up.” And then Squibb’s spacehopper seared down from the stratosphere and scored K-Martu’s flesh with industrial lasers. “See?” Sarah Shepherdson said triumphantly just before the elder being’s mass rolled over her and Yo. Then K’Martu simply swelled up and swallowed the attacking spacecraft whole. “See?” Fashion Accessory said to the other Juniors and Squibb who hovered on the flying carpet held aloft by Samantha Bonnington’s fabric-controlling abilities, “it was a good idea to do that by remote control.” “I love remote controls,” Hacker Nine admitted blissfully as he thumbed the transnuclear bomb detonator. Kaara of Jaaxa stumbled deeper into the jungle undergrowth of the Lemurian interior, trying to avoid the strange creatures that had cut her off from the rest of the humanoid population of the island. Once she encountered a stray spawn and had to dispatch it with her dagger. The creatures seemed to have an acute sense of smell or some other means of tracking her, because every time she paused for rest they were able to find her. Exhausted almost to the limit of her endurance she staggered into another clearing beside an inland lagoon, panting for breath and looking for refuge. The man in the neat black formalwear was waiting for her. “Hello, Kaara,” Nyolurkhotep bade the Caphan. “Vaahir and I have been looking for you.” “Vaahir? Vaahir’s here?” “Vaahir’s close by. He killed the Shoggoth and Visionary, and he’s just finishing off business with the other humans who dared cross him. And then he’ll claim your slave-sisters to his possession.” “He… he killed Vizh? And the Shoggoth? Oh no!” The man in black laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “When he kills you I’m sure he’ll be very gentle.” “K-kills me?” “Well he can hardly own you now, can he, after all the dirty, dishonourable, disgusting things you have done? You’re hardly the pure bright maiden he fell in love with all that time ago, are you? But I’m sure he will end you mercifully, in remembrance of what might have been had you not betrayed him and proved so weak.” Tears began again in Kaara’s eyes. “He hates me?” Nyalurkhotep held out the ceremonial dagger for her. There were many kinds of innocent blood, and any one of them would seal the awakening of the Fairly Great Old Ones. Kaara’s sacrifice especially appealed to the man in black. “There is only one final service you can do him,” he advised the stricken girl. “And that is to die.” Kaara sobbed a little as she took the knife and reversed it against her breast. “Tell him I have always loved him,” she said. They weren’t bad as final words go. Next time: Only a very few things stand between Nyalurkotep and the return of the Fairly Great Old Ones – the Lemurian refugees, the Juniors, the Lair Legion… and the Tenth Caphan. That’s in When You Doubt Your Powers, You Give Power To Your Doubts Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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