 |
|
|
Post By The Hooded Hood finally brings this story to a shattering climax Sun Mar 20, 2005 at 03:49:35 pm EST |
Subject
#207: Almost Concluding Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Fifteen – When You Doubt Your Powers You Give Power To Your Doubts | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
#207: Almost Concluding Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan: Part Fifteen – When You Doubt Your Powers You Give Power To Your Doubts The Hooded Hood's Homepage of DoomCaphan Archive Page Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Tie-ins to this chapter include The Baroness #26: Baron Otto and the Temple of Blue Light by JJJ and Another Untold (Mr Epitome) Tale of the Tenth Caphan Tie-In by Killer Shrike “Okay,” Nitz the Bloody warned the freshman metaphysics student who had just managed to complete the rite that opened the riftway to Yog-Frothoth the Lord of Gates, “put down the elder god and back away.” “Waste him, dudes!” the student told his loathsome servitors. The Dark Shoots of Shrub-Noggerath shambled forwards, ropy black plant creatures the size of trees. “Infernoeku!” the priest of Zeku commended, gesturing at the elder servants. Nothing happened except the first one lashed out with its tendrils and slammed Nitz into a wall. The freshman continued to work out the final set of summoning adjustments on his palm pilot. “Okay, so these things are so alien they’re immune to my Zeku powers,” Shawn Griffon sighed. “Let’s do this the old fashioned way. Bloodygreataxeku!” Around ten minutes later the would-be demon summoner was going to need a palmpilotectomy. “You are too late! I have claimed this weapon in the name of the Hero Elimination Revenge Project Elimination Squad!” shouted Count Fokker, fondling the Transnuclear weapon he and his men had retrieved from the sewers of Berlin. “Hail HERPES! Apply penicillin and another rash will come forth within six weeks!” “Ah, another one that didn’t get the memo,” noted the Dark Knight, glancing at the green-clad minions surrounding him. “What memo?” demanded Wolfgang Fokker. “The memo about the new rules of engagement,” suggested Fin Fang Foom, uncoiling to his full draconic form. “Never mind. Allow us to demonstrate.” “Ours at last! Ours! Our precious!” The Abyssal Greye pushed himself with distaste out of the crude jagged tunnel and glared at the gloating leader of the Ghouls under St Petersburg. “I do wish you’d get a grip, Rasputatious. You sound like a bad action figure.” The Russian ghouls swung round to face the interloper. “Heretic!” they accused Greye. “Blasphemer! Progressive!” “The Necronastycon isn’t yours,” the scholar-ghoul from Gothametropolis sighed. “It only incarnated here because it thought it could use you to cause more trouble.” “It came here because we are devout,” argued the Abyssal Rasputatious. “It knows we remain true to the Fairly Great Old Ones, and once we fathom its dark secrets we shall join them as they feast upon the marrow of all mortals.” And rather more to the point, he gestured to his cabal and ordered, “Tear that decadent traitor to pieces!” “I should point out that I didn’t come alone,” the Abyssal Greye warned. “Right. So hand over the Book of Rude Names before anything too bad happens,” the Librarian suggested. “We’ll get it back to the Miscatonic Library, beef up the defences there some, and hope reality can get patched up again, okay?” “We do not fear you, mortal,” sneered Rasputatious. “That’s why I brought along two humans,” Greye explained. “How about me?” asked Xander the Improbable, Sorcerer Supreme of the Parodyverse. “Do you fear me?” “They’re coming again,” Kathryn warned Blair Atoll. By now most of the refugees of Lemuria had gathered around the arch to protect it from the spawn of K’Martu. Already two waves of the octopus-headed spawn of K’Martu had been repelled, but ammunition was running low and casualties were mounting. “Yeah. Next time we do this we’ve got to get some bazookas,” Blair considered. “And maybe a MIG.” “Take the wounded to shelter on higher ground,” Vaahir commanded the Caphan women. “I shall cover your retreat.” “We can’t abandon this position,” Visionary told him. “If these things take the gate they can use it to swarm into the rest of the world, and then there’s no stopping them.” “You got any thermite charges in your collection?” Kerry asked Blair casually. “And maybe, y’know, about thirty crates of hand grenades?” “I summons Kerry Shepherdson here,” Lisa Waltz called out, “but not her bracelet.” Kerry shifted no more than six feet in response to the first lady of the Lair Legion’s summonsing power. The Naicluv metahuman ability suppressor clattered to the floor where the probability arsonist had been standing. “Wow,” admitted Kerry. “I didn’t know you could do that.” “I practice a lot,” Lisa admitted. “Mostly I summons people without clothing.” Visionary made an urking noise. “Can you bring Kaara here to us?” he suggested. “She’d be a lot safer at our famous last stand than lost alone in the jungle.” “Not with the dimensional eddies we’ve got wefting around us right now,” the amorous advocatrix judged. “It was only safe to summons Kerry because I had line-of-sight.” “I would seek her,” Vaahir agonised, “but I must protect these others from the folly of my ways.” “Oh, go find her!” Miiri told him. “We can die here without your help. Save our sister.” “I can’t,” Vaahir grieved. “You can,” Miiri insisted. “I demand the rakka hoth, the quest of salvation for my sister. If you are truly still a Lord of Caph in your heart where it counts, and if you are a man, if you are worthy of caring for others and possessing anything of true value then you will take up the challenge.” And she smiled viciously. Vaahir blanched. “I… I cannot deny a plea for rakka hoth” he admitted. “But nor can I desert people in such dire need.” And just then the transnuclear blast went off in the risen city across the waves. “What the hell was that?” demanded Visionary as an eye-searing purple mushroom cloud rose from the mall of D’Leyh. “It was awesome,” Kerry answered, a dreamy look on her face. Lisa glanced up at the rapidly descending flying carpet. “I’d say your class has arrived,” she suggested. “That explains so much.” Visionary gibbered. And the angry spawn of R’Martu attacked. Nyalurkhotep, herald of the elder gods, the man in black, smiled with satisfaction as he watched Kaara of Jaaxa push the dagger point to her breast. The final awakening of the Fairly Great Old Ones demanded innocent blood when the stars were right. Billions of light years away at the centre of the universe blind dumb Azafroth was shifting in its sleep despite the best efforts of the protector of the Parodyverse, and as it stirred it twisted reality around it to create the very cosmic conditions in which the elder brood could return. “Go on,” Nyalurkhotep urged the Caphan slave. “End yourself, that you do not have to die upon the blade of he who once loved you.” The stricken girl shuddered, braced herself, then tossed the knife aside. “No,” she decided. “This is cowardly. If Vaahir wants my life then he can take it, but I will face him and whatever comes next, no matter what I have become.” She tilted her head defiantly despite her tears. The man in black held out his hand and the knife flew to it. “You have faced many horrors and atrocities,” he told her, “but I am certain I can still teach you new definitions of pain and terror. Very well, little Caphan, let us do this the hard way.” Kaara realised too late that she was in mortal danger from her suitor’s mentor. She turned to flee but he caught her by the hair and jerked her back to him. “Since Vaahir thinks of your face so often I think I’ll peel it off to give to him,” Nyalurkhotep considered. Kaara screamed. Hatman jetted into the man in black with the force of a steam train, sending him tumbling away from the Caphan even as De Brown Streak swept her up and pulled her clear of the combat. “Don’t worry,” Josh Clement told Kaara. “Rescuing chainmail bikinied women is why I joined the LL, but hammering sadistic bad guys who want to rule the universe is why Hatty signed up.” Nyalurkhotep shrugged the capped crusader aside and launched a bolt of eldritch force at him. Yo caught it on the tip of his/her rapier and flipped it back. “You are to be being a not nice entity,” the pure thought being scolded. “You are to be being under arrest for illegally parking of a sunken city in Lemurian bay.” “Weren’t you all being consumed by Great R’martu?” he asked in slightly irritated tones. “Yo happened to get us out into the Happy Place,” Dancer shrugged. “By some amazing chance we weren’t there when a big bomb reduced that big octopus-head to sushi. And then we dropped back here and we thought of you.” The man in black was not impressed. “Oh, am I supposed to tremble now the mighty Lair Legion has arrived?” he mocked. “Is the world safe for petty crawling humans and their trivial reality? I think not.” He twitched and vomited forth uncountable hordes of elder servitors: ghouls and tri-gos, frighthaunts, gibberloids, screaming children of Yog Frogoth, spawn of K’Martu and Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, Dark Shoots of Shrub-Niggurath, hounds of Trundalos, drooms, gropes, smatterhowlers, sessfiends, and more. The clearing was suddenly filled with hundreds of squirming, writhing slimy unfathomable beings, climbing all over the heroes even as Nyalurkotep rose above them on midnight bat-wings. “Aw crap, I just had this costume cleaned,” Trickshot complained, loosing a series of glue arrows to complicate things. “These things aren’t made of matter,” Al B. Harper warned. “I reckon I could stop them though, if I’d only brought along a couple of Crays.” “Be stopping of them anyway!” ordered Yo, befores/he was dragged down into their midst. “Yo!” cried Hatman, pulling on his Steelers cap and diving down after the deputy leader. Nyalurkotep spared one smirk for the overwhelmed Legion and directed the dimension-spanning hounds of Trundalos after De Brown Streak and Kaara. Before he could follow he found himself caught on the ankle by a Go-Go Yo-Yo and dragged down into the fray. “Hey, we can’t do the big fight scene without the major baddie to punch,” CSFB! complained, demonstrating. Nyalurkhotep responded by abandoning his human form, and then the heroes were drowning in an endless squirming sea of flesh-burrowing maggots. “Report,” demanded Sir Mumphrey Wilton as he strode back into the Lair Mansion operations room flanked by M Epitome and Amber St Clare. In the hour since he had returned from stopping a Caphan invasion fleet he had been fairly busy. “We’ve lost contact with the Operations Team again,” Hallie reported. “There are hurricane winds and electromagnetic storms all across the Pacific. Oh, and we have reports of volcanos becoming active, of shifting ice fields, of deep-sea turbulences, and of high altitude disruptions coming in from across the planet.” “Is there any way we can get over to join the team?” Mr Epitome demanded. “Perhaps Lisa…?” “We haven’t heard from Vizh and Lisa since they went to face Vaahir,” Asil worried. “And we don’t know about Kerry.” “Her poor classmates must be going frantic,” Mumphrey considered. “How are they taking it?” “They were upset,” Hallie admitted, “but they’re waiting for news in their classroom. I’d better give them an upda…” She froze as she looked at the classroom monitor. Then her hands raced over a dozen other controls. Then she said a rude word. “So who’s the lizard dweeb?” Kerry asked her team-mates after they were reunited in the last stand around the Lemurian gateway, “And why is he screaming about treasure?” Harlagaz was already enthusiastically ploughing into the octopoids, flanked by Ham-Boy and Glory to keep him alive, but Fashion Accessory took some time to bring Kerry, Vizh, and Lisa up to date. “Ah, he’s just disappointed because K’Martu was full of squiggly squid bits not gold Amex cards,” FA shrugged. “Who’d have known?” “He seems to think I owe him a starship,” Visionary worried. “Well, it was a pretty crappy starship,” Fashion Accessory consoled him. “It can’t have cost much.” “Is there possibly a chance that you young people were instructed to stay at home and not interfere with this mission?” Lisa speculated. “Well that was what Hallie said,” agreed Hacker Nine, “but you could tell from her tone that she wanted us to hijack Squibb’s jumpship and drop a transnuclear weapon on D’Leyh. Um, we didn’t know the LL were there. We might have thought that through a bit better.” “What?!” demanded Visionary. “And no treasure!” screeched Squibb. “None!” “I’m glad you guys are here,” Kerry told the Juniors. “I’ve just got my powers back, and you guys have just set the bar.” De Brown Streak clutched Kaara in his arms and ran ever faster through an endless jungle of strange twisted vines. He could sense geography being warped around him but he had no way of countering it, so he simply kept moving. Behind him came the Hounds of Trundalos, psychic hunters resembling what a dog might look like if it was picked apart by a skilled taxidermist and reassembled inside out. They loped between dimensions, shifting through secret places to easily keep pace with the mutate speedster. “Let them have me,” Kaara told him. “I need to die anyway. Vaahir wills it.” “Are you kidding?” DBS told the slave girl. “We just heard back from Sir Mumphrey Wilton when we got out of the Happy Place. That Vaahir guy survived a death sentence in the mines, led a revolution, plundered half a dozen planets, blew up Frammistat Eight, and took on the Lair Legion to get to you. That’s got to suggest he’s got an interest, babe.” “He… he did what?” Kaara quivered. “Most guys stick to candy and flowers,” Josh Clement pointed out. “I think you should at least take his phone call, okay?” “Vaahir,” said Kaara, her throat tight. “But that man in black said…” “Yeah, he’s the villain. We tend not to listen to them,” DBS pointed out. “Except when they’re explaining how to foil their nefarious plan to conquer the universe, of course. Otherwise, listen to what your heart’s telling you, okay? What’s your heart telling you?” “That Vaahir is alive,” Kaara answered. And despite her terror she couldn’t help but smile. The hounds came in from all sides, twisting space so that Josh was running in smaller and smaller circles, until finally there was nowhere left to run. Nyalurkhotep loomed before him (for the prime servant of the Fairly Great Old Ones could exist in many places at once), and shut down the mutate’s higher brain functions with a mere thought. DBS toppled over, spilling Kaara at Nyalurhotep’s feet. “Now where were we?” he asked her, reaching down with that cruel ceremonial knife. Vaahir’s plas gar severed his forearm. “You were about to pay for your deceptions and cruelties,” the tenth Caphan told the injured man in black. Nyalurkhotep regrew the severed limb as a spray of writhing tentacles. “Vaahir, you’re an idiot,” he told his opponent. “But I’m glad you’re here to see what I do to your true love. It’s important to me that you know how badly you failed.” Vaahir stood above Kaara and raised his sword. “This weapon has been enchanted to kill elder beings,” he reminded his former mentor. “I will slay you if I must to protect what is mine.” “Yours?” squeaked Kaara. “Actually, it was I who slew the Shoggoth,” Nyalurkhotep noted. “By the laws of your world, the spoils of that victory are therefore mine. Kaara is my property to do with as I choose.” “Then I claim the right of balok gorn Vaahir snarled. “I am content to fight with you to the death.” “Done,” agreed the man in black, and stopped Vaahir’s heart. “Vaahir! shrieked Kaara, scrambling over to her fallen hero. “Now, where were we?” Nyalurkotep asked, reaching out for the dagger once again. Liu Xi shrugged away the splintered remains of the old cultist host on Kapitz Street and cleared the debris until she and her companions stood beneath the naked midnight sky. Only then did she allow herself the time to bend over and vomit as the experiences and sensations of opposing an elder god washed over her. “You did okay, kid,” Con Johnstantine assured her. “Shabba-Dhabba-Dhu’s all tucked in and cosy until next time some bozo tries to wake him up, and the glaziers and plasters of Paradopolis have got some work to keep ‘em in business for a while longer. Plus a nest of whacko cultists got eaten, which is always a nice bonus.” “I couldn’t destroy that thing,” the young elementalist confessed. “I didn’t know how. I wanted to, but I couldn’t find a way to unlock…” “You did fine,” Ebony of Nubilia assured her. “We were in a tight spot when the Shoggoth…” “Yeah, what’s the story on old squelchy?” Johnstantine wondered. “When you called him he was a no-show, and then you said…” “He’s dead,” Ebony interrupted. “He faced Nyalurkotep in the sunken mall of D’Leyh, and he didn’t stand a chance.” Liu Xi’s head was throbbing, but she reached out with her mind to feel at the strange hole in reality that throbbed in her subconscious like an abscessed tooth. “That place you talked about… it’s surfaced. It’s much nearer now. And I think it’s gone to Lemuria!” “Nyalurkhotep’s going for the big one then,” Con sighed. “End of the world apocalypse, with special guest stars the Fairly Great Old Ones. What a pillock!” “We have to get back there,” Liu Xi cried. “The refugees will be unprotected!” She tried to fathom a possible way to translate herself through the nightmare maze of twisted dimensions that the route to Lemuria had become. “They’re not unprotected,” Ebony assured her. “The Lair Legion will have got there by now. And there’s also the Manga Shoggoth.” “You said the Shoggoth was dead,” Liu Xi objected. “Yes, Nyalurkhotep killed the Manga Shoggoth,” Ebony answered gravely, “but he forgot about the Manga Shoggoth!” Vaahir’s heart started again, and he sat up. “Get away from her, Petar!” he warned, rising to his feet. “Well aren’t you a persistent little organism,” sneered the man in black. “I suppose that’s why I used you. But it’s stopped being amusing. Die!” The Caphan took a step back as the force of the elder being’s will slammed into him. “No,” he replied, and came towards Nyalurkhotep again. The herald of the Fairly Great Old Ones laughed and peeled away the mortal guise he clothed himself in. He showed himself to Vaahir in the full glory of his mind-shattering true self to shatter the ephemeral’s sanity forever. “Yuck,” responded the tenth Caphan, and kept on coming. Nyalurkhotep vomited out a spray of flesh-eating maggots to envelop Vaahir; but a thin translucent sheath around the hero’s body absorbed them. And for the first time the man in black had to pay attention. “What?” Vaahir plunged his plas gar into his enemy’s stomach. The sigils engraved there to destroy the Manga Shoggoth were equally effective against the one who had carved them. “What?” gasped Nyalurkhotep again, genuinely hurt. His attention had been divided many ways, directing the attack upon the Lair Legion, co-ordinating the siege of the Arch, reviving Azafroth, reassembling K’Martu; now he brought his full intellect to bear on the mortal that had just wounded him. Vaahir hacked at him again, and again, his blade severing the weird links that held the man in black to the lesser dimensions. And Nyalurkotep realised what was protecting the Caphan from harm. “A Shoggoth! But how?” And then he saw. He had slain every fragment of biomass linked to the escaped servitor of the elder gods, but there was one fragment whose link was severed because it was contaminated by mundane matter. That shard of Shoggoth which had joined with the Lair Legion was inside Vaahir, and the two of them were working together against a mutual enemy. “Yes,” bubbled the Shoggoth in Nyalurkotep’s mind. “I’m cross.” The man in black fought back with beak and claw and tentacle and sucker, but now he was in a fair fight. Devoid of his attention, his plans began to slip. Hatman and Dancer broke free of the writhing maggot-swarm and allowed the Legion to rally against the horrors of the night. Liu Xi and Ebony began to patch together the pathways that would pull Lemuria back to where it was supposed to be. Xander the Improbable and the Lunar Public Librarian rebound the Necronastycon in a place of security where it was forced to quiescence. Amazing Guy calmed down the fury of Azafroth and lured him back from wakefulness. Lisa led the Juniors in pressing back the tide of monsters that surged towards the Arch. And that wretched Kerry Shepherdson channelled the fury of her heart and detonated it on the battered mall of D’Leyh, shattering the very isle on which it stood, tumbling it down into the abyssal depths again, lost until the stars were once again right. Nyalurkotep howled his anger and turned it all on Vaahir. If this final challenge could be overcome then Kaara’s blood could still win the day, and the Fairly Great old Ones would rise in insane splendour for dark eons of eternity. And there were only two problems, but they were united in front of him, wielding a weapon of his own making. “She is mine!” screeched Nyalurkhotep, lunging for Kaara of Jaaxa. “She is not!” shouted Vaahir of Caph, unflinching, bringing his blade into play with cold precision. “She is free!” thundered the Manga Shoggoth as the blade seared home and the man in black collapsed into strands of stained malice and sunk out of the dimensions of the Parodyverse. And then it all went quiet. And Next Time: The Epilogue, in which all things have consequences: The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Learn is Just To Love and Be Loved In Return. 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. |
| Follow-Ups: |
|
| Echo™ v2.4 © 2003-2005 Powermad Software |
|
|