Overlord

41

Slater, Aston, and company ran through the fog, staying close together so they didn’t lose each other. All Slater wanted was the safety of a dark tunnel, hopefully free of mantics. A tunnel that would lead them back to the green cavern would be ideal, but at this stage she would take anything that wasn’t this mayhem and whatever those writhing black tentacles belonged to. She remembered them diving through the underwater door, traveling through the strange city, running blindly from one cave to the next. How could they possibly find their way out? Maybe with enough time and supplies, and without mantics attacking them, they could eventually retrace their route. She hoped with all her heart that’s what would happen. Or if not, that they could find any other way out. Just to be back above ground, fresh air and open skies. She would gladly welcome the endless white expanse of surface Antarctica in place of the dark tunnels and green glows of subterranean Antarctica.

Fatigue turned her muscles to water. Her lungs burned with each inhale and exhale. She wondered if she had enough left in her to make it back to safety.

Please, she begged silently to herself. I just want to get out. Let us escape!

Then they burst into a clearing in the fog and her stomach sank, her mouth fell open in shock.

“How the hell did we get turned around?” Aston said, spinning on the spot, staring into the swirling whiteness.

They stood at the edge of the glimmering green sea, the mist a wall around them, seemingly held back by Digby O’Donnell, kneeling in the water not ten feet away. He still held aloft the glowing green thing. From close up, Slater saw it was an idol of some kind, but its glow must have provided heat as well as light, and a lot of it. Dig’s hand holding it was red, almost fleshless in places where the skin and meat had been burned away. His other hand repeatedly dipped into the ocean and came back up to splash his face.

O’Donnell cried out, a wail of pained ecstasy, and Slater realized he wasn’t washing his face. Blood and fish scales dripped from his cheeks, as tears poured from his eyes. Even his tears glittered greenly. All around him, fish and other creatures swarmed as if drawn to him. Flaccid jellyfish and pulsing shrimp, wriggling worms and fanning stars, and dozens of fish of all sizes, all glowing from the inside out with that incessant green light. And Dig repeatedly scooped up whatever his hand found and crammed it into his mouth, chewing manically, his cheeks bulging, the green brightness showing through the stretched skin, ichor running over his chin..

“He’s eating them all,” Aston said in disgust. “He’s not right in the head.”

Slater wondered if there had ever been a greater understatement.

“Dig!” she shouted. She moved a little closer, brushing off Aston’s hand as he plucked at her arm. “Digby! You have to stop whatever it is you’re doing!”

He made no sign that he’d heard her, just gathered more glowing creatures and crammed them into his packed mouth. He crunched and chewed, as much of the masticated mess falling back into the ocean as whatever he managed to swallow. The other things swimming around him were in a frenzy, snapping it up, eating their unfortunate fellows only to be grabbed and bitten by Digby themselves.

Aston came to stand next to Slater. “What are you doing?” He waded knee-deep into the water and reached out to slap Digby’s shoulder. “Dig, what’s going on?”

Finally, the man turned. His eyes glowed bright green. “Yog-Sothoth!” he cried. “Through all time and space, he comes!”

“What the hell is he saying?” Tate demanded.

Aston looked back to her, refusing to believe Digby could be this delusional. “Yog-Sothoth. The man is obsessed with At the Mountains of Madness. It’s a story by H.P. Lovecraft about…”

Tate scowled. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what it’s about! I’m putting an end to this.” She raised her pistol and took aim at the back of Dig’s head.

Slater opened her mouth to protest. She couldn’t allow cold-blooded murder, could she? But then surely Digby was beyond redemption, beyond saving. His mind had surely snapped and who knew what would happen to his body after the amount of infected sea life he had consumed began to spread through his cells. But her unspoken protest was unnecessary.

Before Tate could squeeze the trigger, a thick, shining black tentacle snaked out from the wall of mist in front of them and grabbed her. Her body arched, mouth agape in shock, as she was wrenched away, back into the fog, so quickly her cry of alarm was whipped from her throat as she went.

Slater screamed out the mercenary’s name, finding herself knee deep in the water next to Aston as she staggered forward in some pointless attempt to follow the woman. There were two quick gunshots, then a blood-curdling scream that stopped midway. For a moment there was silence but for the roiling sea and Digby’s maniac giggling and chewing, then Tate’s body came flying back through the air. It landed with a slap on the ground at the ocean’s edge. The top of her skull was gone, as if bitten off, her brain nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, God,” Slater said. “That’s what the journal meant by eating people’s heads? It eats their brains?”

More gunfire sounded through the thick fog behind them. Slater looked that way, wondering how many of the three mercenaries remained alive. All of them? Was Larsen dead? Were they shooting at mantics or the black tentacles that so easily plucked people from the shore?

O’Donnell was laughing again, high-pitched and crazed. “We join, we commune, through Yog-Sothoth we see all,” he said in a screeching, inhuman voice. “All will come to him. All will serve him.”

“Digby, please!” Slater said. “You have got to stop this!” She began to wonder if Tate had had the right idea, and fingered the bloodstone knife in her jacket pocket. Was she capable of murder? Of plunging it between Digby O’Donnell’s shoulder blades? Would it even help now?

“We just have to get away,” Aston said, pulling at her sleeve. “Try to run again, put this water at our backs and find the cavern wall. Follow it until we find a passage away from… this!”

Slater looked from Digby to Aston and back again, her brain spinning in neutral. Any second she expected a thick tentacle to snatch her up and part of her almost welcomed it, an end to this insanity. But no, she wanted to survive. They all needed to live, no more death.

“You don't understand,” Digby said, turning to face them at last. He no longer seemed so dazed, his eyes still bright, unnatural, incandescent green, but focused. “I can see it all.”

“What do you mean?” Aston asked. “What can you see?”

“I see what he sees. I see everything that Yog-Sothoth observes. I see wherever his minions look, every one of them at once. My mind is legion.”

“You can see through their eyes?” Aston asked. “All of them? The mantics?”

Digby grinned, nodding. “That’s how I found this!” He hefted the idol in his burned, mutilated hand. “And how I found this!” He used the idol to gesture out around them, taking in the whole infinite cavern, the shining sea, the creatures it contained. “I am one with all of them. Every fish, every mantic, every living thing that has ever eaten and joined, I see through them and they through me.” He shrilled crazed laughter. “Every single thing. I see the caverns, the passageways, the door in the lake, the lift to the surface. I see you, us through so many different sets of eyes right now. From the beasts, too!” He made another sweeping motion, this time behind them.

Slater and Aston spun around, saw a crowd of mantics standing behind Jen and Syed where they trembled on the shore. The creatures swayed gently, otherwise immobile, watching them, but blocking their retreat.

Slater startled at the sight of them, Aston raised his dagger.

“Could he be telling the truth?” Slater asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. There’s a fungus that turns ants into zombie drones. It’s essentially a natural form of mind control. Fungal cells inside the ant's head release chemicals that essentially take command of the insect's central nervous system.”

“All right. I don’t need a lecture right now. All I wanted to know was is it possible?”

Aston shook his head. “It shouldn’t be. This is a far cry from zombie ants. But he does seem to have control of the mantics.”

“Don’t worry,” O’Donnell said. “They won’t harm us here, not now. Through him, through my connection, they do my bidding. I am with them. I am them.”

“If that’s the case,” Aston said, “you can have them show us the way out. Let’s all get out of here!”

O’Donnell laughed again. “There’s no need! Soon we will all be one with him!”

“Digby, it’s not a god!” Aston yelled at the man. “I don’t know what it is, but what you believe is a fiction. That thing, that monster out there, is some mutant, yes, but it’s no god. Some kind of cephalopod, a giant octopus, some presumed extinct mega-fauna, that’s all. But whatever it is, it doesn’t have some greater plan. It’s just another predator and it wants to eat us!”

“Yes!” O’Donnell agreed. “Eat us! But it is a god, Sam. Oh, in fact, it’s more than a god. And it will make us all one with its glory.”

Slater felt faint. “Sam,” she said. “You were right. Let’s just go!”

“But how will we find our way?” Jen Galicia said.

Aston shook his head, squared his shoulders. “If Dig here is telling the truth about seeing through their eyes, I can only think of one way.”

Slater looked over at him, read his expression and intent. “Sam, no!”