Dead End 2: Deathly Di-Di-Doo Ch.18 (Patreon)

[Cosmos of Scale]

— Sean Caine, in Transit:RE-IN-CAR-NA-TION —

The cosmos screamed at him, and he screamed back.

His reincarnation had gone very wrong, very quickly this time. He had grown used to the process after some 60 times through the cycle; He hadn’t grown used to it like this.

Each of his reincarnations was special, unique in death and rebirth, but more special in the Change than the method. He died; he passed; he lived again.

 Yet here, this time, this reincarnation, that mold was partially broken — a crack in the final stage of casting, tempering, and setting a life.

Until now, all of his time during that ‘passing’ portion of that had been lost to him, much to his eternally reincarnating relief. The Void Between was a terrible stretch of unreality connecting everything that was real — a Void of nowhere, no when, nothing, and yet every ‘every’ in Between simultaneously.

Now, he caught the tail end of it through that crack in the mold. Just a questing tentacle of indescribable scale rolling in its sleep; his soul dodged it in the Void Between, but barely. The dodge sucked him into the gravity well of one universe, the same the tentacle had lazily emerged from, and thus, the setting of his next life was sealed.

His soul came screaming in from outside reality. He broke through some barrier that was not there, and then down, down, down he fell.

The ‘real’ void beneath the barrier was no match for the Void Between, though it certainly tried to live up to that standard.

Stars twinkled at him from every angle, waking and dreaming. A thousand, a million, a billion, trillion, quadrillion more. One was an eye. Another was a gate. Another still was a distant being of blinding brilliance. Yet another still was a gaping scar upon reality.

They were not the only lights that illuminated the void.

Ethereal flames of reentry licked at the stuff of his soul. They wrapped him in a burning cocoon, yet he could still see clearly beyond it all too clearly. For those falling moments, the flames were the eyes of his soul, curiously peeking in every direction. He couldn’t help himself. Even if he could’ve, the void wanted him to look upon it.

The distant border marches of the universe were sparse bulwarks, absence defining defense. There, stars shone forgotten, more than any mortal mind could ever count.

As he fell towards the center, the void populated itself. He didn’t know for certain where he’d ended up in this life, but from what he saw through the flames of his soul’s entry, he could make an unfortunately educated guess.

He’d seen much through 59 lives. He’d walked so many paths, and he’d learned to accept that while those paths were real, in the end, his true nature was transitory. He would die; he would pass; he would live again.

He thought himself, if not prepared for this unfortunate ‘verse, at least able to keep his head above water after all he’d seen and done. He’d even experienced something like this — what he suspected here, at least — in a blood-stained city under a watchful moon and a long, terrible, dreaming night.

He’d known the unsettling sensation of ‘eyes on the inside’, a creeping sense of his brain, his self, his soul. Would another iteration of eldritch enlightenment truly be so different?

Yet to this ‘verse, it was not his self that mattered; the void stressed that this wasn’t that kind of dream. The flames cocooning him were looking purely out rather than in, visions of a cosmos so great and so apathetic that his reincarnating fall through it went utterly ignored.

He — 59 lives deep in mortal, immortal, and even nigh-ascendant experience — was shown a level of existence, a living tier of sheer cosmic scale, that only his concept of Reincarnation could rival.

Even with all he’d seen and done, all the ‘verses he’d trekked through, all the power he’d accumulated and lost through various lives, his perspective was lacking. For fleeting moments, the momentum of his fall fixed that.

Whole nebulae bloomed with forming stars, a cosmic womb where stellar lives played out ignorant of the universe beyond its gentle embrace. The young frolicked within nurturing spaces, and the old stole into the nursery to devour them whole. A starry matron watched it all, reveling in the cycle of children consumed and children consuming.

Set just above the realm of three mere dimensions, machinery exploited the cosmos. Energy was harnessed from the burning and turning of stars, and channeled through astral wires and gears to civilizations and beings so far removed — as distant from length, width, height, and even time as a single line was from the vast majesty of the known universe.

Ever distant, in the center of the universe, a horrible mass wavered and contorted and rotted and exploded and synthesized and persisted and DREAMED on and on. It was blind and dumb, subsisting on the inertia of awful rest and rhythmic absorption. Even the greatest beings revered it with awe and horror, but could not bear to look too long. It was the sun and source — as simply wrong as it was naturally right.

He saw it all, systems of existence and cosmic life beyond mortal and even some eldritch ken.

He saw how his Reincarnation could’ve slotted into that tier, a concept great enough to exist on such a scale. Others there manipulated similar concepts; similar but lesser, limited, and for some, lacking entirely. He could’ve used the advantage to establish himself there. He could’ve lived amongst their cosmic systems in that life. He could’ve been a god to mortals and just another 

He refused.

Though temptation streamed through the crack in the mold of Reincarnation, it failed to take.

His fall into the ‘verse revealed so much and tried to convince him otherwise. The void waxed poetic about power and smugly screamed scale in his face. It raised him so close to ascension with an agenda. Then, he refused. It dropped him as if burned.

And when it did, he continued as he always had, as he always would, with Death and Reincarnation as his companion and self, respectively. He cast himself, tempered himself, and set himself into the levels of existence he preferred.

To the kinds of beings he’d seen during his fall, he would be utterly insignificant, an ant amongst ants beneath the trodding steps of gods. But that ant knew that sometimes, it was perfectly fine to be the ant. He didn’t need scale; he was satisfied with self.

Between one moment and the next, the screaming cosmos went abruptly silent.

Spitefully, the cosmos cut him off from its ‘enlightenment’ of scale, those visions of greater, grander, ghastlier things. It threw him into a lowly tier of existence and wiped its hands, apathetically certain that madness was inevitable, for the transition from cosmic comprehension to mortal limitation was a brutal one. 

He did as he was always going to do and finished his reincarnation. The cosmos didn’t notice as he wrote himself into it.

He went from a falling soul-star bearing cosmic witness to a half-orphaned bastard on the streets of London’s East End, son of a young but already rather infamous gentleman and a high-class whore who’d fallen out of favor and turned to drink, drugs, and inevitable overdose. 

His name was familiar, a comforting certainty burned into his soul. His circumstances were less so, but still workable — especially the history he’d been able to give himself thanks to the rare opportunity of awareness during the Reincarnation process.

Deadbeat daddy dearest was named Aleister Crowley. He wouldn’t take that name. Instead, he planned to secure his unrightful inheritance in other ways.

Sean Caine looked around the small room he’d arrived in, merging with the reincarnating history he’d written for himself. He had nothing in this life, but his first move should change that rather nicely.

“Welp, time to go rob an occultist!”

IIIII

— Sean Caine —

“Holy-… Dad.” Alice deadpanned.

“Hm? Yes, Darling Daughter?” I hummed and asked in return.

“You can’t just start a story like that!”

“Can’t I? I believe I just did.”

“You’re gonna drive us all mad!”

“Drive you all sane would be more accurate, actually.”

“Sane?” Elaine asked. “How does that work? Everything in that intro certainly seemed more… mad than sane to me.”

“Was it, though?” I asked, putting forward thoughts to muse over. “Coming into that life, I saw the truth of the cosmos. And then, I didn’t. Seeing that, does it make a man mad? Or does it make him more sane than anyone else, yet unable to express it, unable to sympathize ever again, unable to cope after he wakes and the dream doesn’t fade?

“Those weren’t hallucinations, after all. Every being and every system I saw then was realer and deeper than most mortal minds could dream. They were beyond ken, yes, but they weren’t some delusion. They weren’t madness. No, for mortals, the madness always comes on the return.”

My explanation left the room thoughtful.

Elaine and Alice, both mortal but more, would’ve had the easiest time coming to terms with such sanity. I saw it now. They both actually stopped to consider the perspective I put forth. Elaine chuckled to herself, and Alice frowned.

“I know the feeling: suddenly being shown… so much more.”

“That-… Dammit, Dad, that does make sense.”

Gabriel and Didi, of course, had seen much and even more in their lives; they were used to overwhelming sanity, though Gabriel was less so than Didi. Still, Gabriel had stood at her Father’s side as He did His work; she knew Creation was always larger than most any could comprehend.

Didi, of course, would’ve rivaled any of the cosmic beings I’d just described, even the blind, idiot, dreaming sun at the center of that cosmos.

Of Alice’s new followers, Lacoste seemed to be having the most trouble. For all he dressed the part of chaos, in the end, he was just a man trying to have a good time while he could. He was shifting awkwardly in his seat, uncharacteristically ill at ease, but at the same time, he didn’t close his ears to my story.

Eustace had experience with the esoteric and godly — his Court worshipping and at times even working with the Bat-God Barbatos — but never like this, never as holistic visions of cosmic truth. Sonya, likewise, had worshipped and worked with her Church’s own cosmic patron, Trigon, but she’d only ever done so on a mortal scale.

The former sat still as a statue, listening for more and learning to think for himself. The latter was on the edge of her seat, leaning in for further enlightenment straight from the lips of her prophet’s father.

Voivode had dared to muddle Death with divine technology he didn’t understand. He would’ve fit right into the mortal side of the cosmos in that life, sticking fingers and whole hands where he shouldn’t while thinking blind faith would protect him. Voivode didn’t realize that similarity yet, but he would eventually, as my story of the night continued.

His Abaddons, unfortunately, were somewhat just along for the ride.

Meanwhile, after Alice and Elaine, I directed the second-most attention to Jason and Cass, gauging their reactions.

Jason was thoughtful at the worst of times, wickedly intelligent and well-lived at the best — exactly the type who would’ve driven himself mad over the cruel sanity of those cosmos…

“An ant walks across a circuit board. It doesn’t see the circuit board; it sees an alien landscape instead. Maybe even a city it can’t comprehend, but can at least recognize as something similar to its anthill,” Jason mused.

“Then, for whatever reason, it sees more. It gains… perspective. It sees the lines beneath its feet as artwork, as patterns with purpose. It can understand the language of the board. It knows how copper channels current, and exactly what all the transistors, diodes, chips, resistors, and capacitors do. It learns, in that moment, that the circuit board it walks across is just one piece of an incomprehensibly greater whole.”

“‘With enough pieces like this, pheromones can be sent from food to hill in an instant,’ It exclaims,” Jason continued, doing the same as the metaphorical ant as he got into it. “‘The key! It’s the key to-!’ And then, it doesn’t. It’s just an ant again.

“It remembers the echoing ghosts of theory and principles and even practical application, but it’s just an ant. An ant that has seen more than most humans do… but just an ant. All it saw was real, but the knowledge was not for an ant. Maybe it tries to express what it saw to its peers, but pheromones lack the necessary complexity of communication, and in the end, it’s just an ant.”

And Cass… Cass was Cass, always.

“彡໒(⊙ᴗ⊙)७彡” She blinked and smiled innocently at Jason. ‘So what you’re sayin’ is… Ant-reka! Then, Ant-gnorance is Ant-liss?’

“That’s not at all what I just said,” Jason deadpanned.

“More like Ant-lice in Wonderland,” Elaine quipped.

“He did a great job of describing it,” I earnestly praised. “That is the eldritch sanity that drives men mad.”

“┐(=ｘωｘ=)┌” Cass, undeterred, just shrugged. ‘Eh, still, all I’m hearing is that the madness only takes if you let it. Just don’t think about it, don’t stress, don’t go bonkers, neh?’

“How could you not think about it?!” Sonya exclaimed. “You present it as simple, but nay! To see such truth, such enlightenment, and simply ignore it?! I would-! I would-…!”

“Go mad.” Jason nodded. “Yeah, I get it. Without your very specific brain, Black Bat, I think even ignoring it would drive most people mad.”

“A different type of mad, but that does sound accurate,” Voivode agreed.

“( ✧≖ ͜ʖ≖)” Cass smugged. ‘Sucks to suck. That’s another win for ‘Brain Empty, Brain Stronk’, baby~! Mark it down!’

“You know, weirdly enough, I do think she would’ve done well in that life,” I said. “Exactly because of her ‘very specific brain’. I knew a few people like her there, and they tended to last the longest. Sometimes it’s a dead set purpose; sometimes it’s faith; sometimes it’s a head too full of ‘petty’ and human matters to concern itself with cosmic ones. It’s exceedingly rare, but it is possible to dodge eldritch sanity if you’re just the right kind of person not to linger on it.”

“ღゝ◡╹ )ノ♡” Cass hit a pose, pointing and winking. ‘Smooth, baby! No folds, just smut and violence and good times! The tentacles slii~ide right off!’

“ALRIGHT… ALRIGHT~!” Lacoste regained his chaotic energy with that reassuring advice. “I can do that! Miss me with the eldritch-! Nah, I’m gonna miss myself with it, EYEAH!”

Didi giggled at his chaos. “I hope you do. Alice could use a ‘very specific brain’ on her side. You never know when that rare brand of sanity will be necessary.”

“Especially in a cult,” I pointed out.

“Uh-uh.” Alice shook her head and crossed her arms. “We’re not dabbling in any of this crap. If Dad mentions something in his story tonight, consider it off limits for the Concord.”

“Heard, Daughter Death. And I rather agree.” Sonya bowed her head. “I shall add that rule into the scripture — not as one of your commandments, but still something very worth following.”

Slowly, Eustace nodded as well. “I do not know if Barbatos qualifies yet, but if he does, the Court shall take your words to heart, Alice.”

“Your false idol? I am certain it will fall under our prophet’s rule,” Voivode scoffed.

Eustace’s blank owl mask stared imperiously back at Voivode. “For now, that remains to be seen.”

“Hm,” Didi hummed to herself, musing. “Barbatos is cosmic and eldritch, but I wouldn’t call him unknowably maddening. In the best cases, he’s not even malicious — just a bat with a job.”

His blank mask didn’t change, but Eustace’s posture transitioned from confrontational to smug. Voivode clicked his tongue and looked away. Alice, responsible for both of them at least somewhat getting along, dropped her head into her hands and groaned.

“There, there.” Elaine patted her on the shoulder. “They haven’t started fighting just yet.”

“Yet…” Alice grumbled.

“Oh, thank Didi,” Jason sighed. “Not that I doubted you, Alice, but it’s good to hear you laying down the law like that.”

Alice teased him, “‘Thank Didi,’ huh? Is that a convert I hear?”

Jason didn’t deny it, nodding. “Ever since she kept my company until my revival. Just never officially. But if you’re leading that official side, I think I could stand to convert, yeah.”

Alice blushed at the statement of trust. Her followers began looking at Jason differently with it, too. Now that he knew the rumors of a ‘Death Cult’ had something real to them, I could easily see Jason joining up with Alice’s Concord.

Didi and I shared amused and fond glances. And thus, our daughter’s influence grew…

“Should we get back to that life of yours, Caine?” Gabriel asked. “I am rather interested in hearing what came of it after you denied the cosmos so early. And Crowley? From what I remember of the one I know, that man in such a cosmos could not have been up to anything good.”

“You’d be remembering correctly.” I nodded. “My father in that life was a man of means, though he mostly used them for ends of curiosity rather than malice. I suppose I took after him in that regard, or more accurately, he retroactively took after me when I wrote my reincarnation into the cosmos.”

“That…!” Sonya gasped, nearly breathless. “The Demon could never; all he knew was blood and destruction! Your father is great and mighty indeed, Daughter Death.”

“Heh.” At first, Alice preened. Then, she mastered her reaction, trying for cool nonchalance.

“I mean, yeah. Duh. Did you think he and Mom are together for nothing? No need to make a thing about it.”

Somehow, her teenage nonchalance worked on Sonya; the mistress of blood looked at Alice with stars in her eyes. Alice did her best not to start preening again.

“What do you mean by ‘curiosity rather than malice’?” Eustace asked.

“And taking after him? Or him taking after you?” Jason added. “Crowley was infamously occult in just about everything he did, but I can’t imagine you jumping headfirst into that world, Sean, especially after seeing what you did on your entry.”

“Σ(-᷅_-᷄ ๑)” Cass scratched her head. ‘Yeah, actually. I can’t really picture you worshipping Elder and Outer Gods. Wasn’t this supposed to be a cult-leading storytime?’

In reverse order, I answered their questions.

“Worship? No. But I did make… use of the cosmos. It cast me down for refusing it, for supposedly denying its enlightenment, and for not participating in its usual systems as the natives did. But I’d still seen; I still knew its unique brand of sanity. And unlike the natives, I had just enough Reincarnating experience to bear the weight of that sanity… and turn it back on the cosmos.

“The cultish portion of this story comes later, but it’s built on those principles — on use rather than worship, and a fair bit of uncommon sense to wrap it all together. That was my intention, at least. In practice… well, you’ll see.

“So, yeah, I did kinda dive headfirst into the occult, just with a unique philosophy to guide me through it and the sanity to actually back up that philosophy. Crowley took after my philosophy of ‘use, not worship’ without knowing, but he didn’t have the perspective to make anything real of it.

“And thus, while he wasn’t malicious — no grand, evil scheme for occult power — his curiosity did make him dabble in a bit of everything eldritch. Deadbeat daddy dearest was a collector, and an unfortunate practitioner — unaware of how his collection was driving him down a maddening path half-steps at a time.

“I took responsibility, of course. Crowley really should’ve thanked me for robbing his blind.” I said with a grin, spinning back up into my storytelling a moment later.

IIIII

— Sean Caine, Bastard —

The practices of personal security at the end of the Victorian Era were pitiful. A lock easily picked, a single patrolling policeman, and a neighborhood where ‘such things never happened!’ — Sean made quick work of the obstacles. The ease almost made him give himself away with a groan. He was used to greater challenges of burglary…

Thankfully, his target had a bit more than most at his disposal to spice things up after the mundane security.

The threshold of the townhouse creaked. Sean felt it stir beneath his feet. A whisper ghosted into his ear.

‘You are not welcome here… Intruders shall-…’

Sean ignored the whisper. He ignored the unnatural chill down his spine. He knew what it really was: just an illusion meant to invoke greater mysteries. There was intent behind it, but only mortal intent. Sean noted that his wayward father could cast at least one spell, and he pressed past it without issue.

Laid bare and subsequently broken with a flex of sanity, the warded threshold fell silent. Crowley’s London residence lay open to him. The townhouse rose three stories, all packed into a dense arrangement that fit the tight city streets of London.

Sean had done his research; ‘casing the joint’, as it were.

The owner was absent tonight — out on another pilgrimage abroad — and Sean thought that was something of a shame. It made his mission simpler, of course, but he wouldn’t be able to meet the man who’d sired him in this life just yet. Oddly, though, he’d seen no one to maintain the townhouse in Crowley’s absence.

After the ward upon the threshold was broken, the townhouse offered more resistance, subtle and magical. A raucous banging rang in Sean’s ears, something only he could hear. He began to hum along to the beat of eldritch drums.

Further in, his path was suddenly blocked by twisting shapes and spirits, apparitions that would frighten any Victorian thief dead where they trespassed. Sean gave each a nod of greeting and continued on his way.

Up the stairs, he was stymied once more. A violent curse reared on two metaphorical legs with the scream of a dying horse. Hooves upon hooves came to beat down on Sean. The pain was as real as an illusion could get; it tried to beat him back down the stairs and out the door.

Sean raised soothing hands to the curse. The gentle touch of magic foreign to these cosmos freed the trapped spirit — ‘a faithful steed, murdered and bled’.

Through a window, he saw the freed spirit appear on the street below. The ghostly horse whinnied and shook its head before taking off at a gallop into the London night.

“I’m sure that won’t give anyone the fright of their life,” Sean chuckled to himself.

The townhouse’s last defense came at the door of Crowley’s study, the den of his eldritch collection. When Sean approached, ink crept out from beneath the closed door. It blended perfectly with the darkness of the corridor, but Sean saw.

Casually, he watched the ink take on an alien form. Too many limbs, constantly shifting, warped simulacra flesh into existence. Eyes blinked open, gold shining from black.

Its voice bubbled and burbled and boiled its way through sanity, “Do YoU nOt HeEd ThE mAsTeR’s CuRsEd WaRdS aNd WaRnInGs? YoU… aRe NoT… wElCoMe HeRe-”

Then, every eye on the creature stopped and blinked. The alien malice in the air disappeared in an instant, like smoke. Curiosity replaced it, paradoxically human. A form emerged from the ink, with tentacles quietly, curiously twitching behind it — as if just barely suppressing the instinct to reach and feel and learn with them.

It — she — was pale-white, ink-black, and burnished-gold, taking the shape of an elegant young lady so naturally. She was human, yet not, yet so. Magically shoved into the alien flesh, Sean could see a soul of familiar star-stuff

She was not nearly as unknowable as she appeared. And now, she was confused and curious, emotions a true monster wouldn’t be able to express.

Her form settled. There was even hope in her posture, peeking through alien-flesh-enforced mannerisms, as she laid eyes on the flesh and blood of the man who’d magicked her into existence.

“… Young Master?”

IIIII

— Sean Caine —

“Dad.” Alice deadpanned yet again.

Grinning, I played along. “Hm? Yes, Darling Daughter?”

“There’s no way-!” She began, growing incensed. Then, she remembered who she was talking to, and simply sighed. “No, there’s absolutely a ‘way’ with you. Of course, the monstrous alien guard dog you found was also an adorable and refined young noble lady.”

“(´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥`)” Cass wept happy tears. ‘I love her already. I’m gonna cherish the weird ink-alien-maid-lady forever.'

“I do not understand,” Voivode said. “That creature, what was it? And how did it come to stand guard at Crowley’s townhouse in London?”

“A Shoggoth, right?” Jason asked. “I mean, the Shoggoths I’ve heard of were all shambling monstrosities at the South Pole, but the shapeshifting mass of tentacles, eyes, and ink-flesh does fit.”

“Yes and no,” I replied, waving my hand so-so. “Violet was a Shoggoth in the same way a human is a primate.”

“Violet,” Elaine chuffed. “That’s way too cute a name for some shambling horror.”

“Then it’s a good thing Violet rarely shambled,” I quipped back. “The Shoggoths of the South Pole were the origin of the species, created by the Elder Things. They shambled. They started as crude and mindless eldritch slaves, and even after they grew rebelliously sentient, they never really became sophont.”

“SOPHONT~?” Lacoste asked. “As in the Greek sophos? ‘Wise’?”

Alice looked at him sideways. “What the-? You know Greek?”

“CHILDREN OF DIONYSUS, EYEAH~” Lacoste shrugged in reply.

“It means intelligence akin to human, but not necessarily human, as ‘sapient’ would imply,” Didi explained.

“Antarctic Shoggoths didn’t quite get there,” I continued. “But they weren’t the end of their race, either. Calling it evolution would be inaccurate. There was hardly anything natural about the Shoggoths. Still, with the help of outside factors — the insectile Mi-Go, the Deep Ones, and even some humans — some Shoggoths were eventually modified into something sophontic. Like Violet.

“Violet was, essentially, just a pseudo-Shoggoth. Deadbeat daddy dearest had combined necromancy and summoning. He called back a spirit from beyond the veil and interred it in a priceless piece of Shoggoth flesh. Thus, Violet was born — reborn, more accurately — with the thinking mind of a human and the malleable physical form of a Shoggoth.”

Didi frowned in disapproval. “It’s a very good thing you went to liberate Crowley of his collection, if that’s what he was doing with it.”

Gabriel nodded in agreement. “That’s just not right. Violet was at rest. He tore her from that and made her a monster. And I can’t imagine that’s all he did in the process.”

I smirked. “It’s a good thing I stole her along with the rest of deadbeat daddy dearest’s collection, then. I came out with a fair bit of cash, a haul of grimoires, a few idols and artifacts, and Violet as a companion for the rest of that life.”

“Grimoires?” Sonya perked up with curiosity.

“Idols...?” Voivode asked in a dark, scornful voice.

“٩(●ö●)۶” Cass exclaimed. ‘Cash-!’

“U=๏ x ๏=U” Cutting herself off, she switched up and stared with interest. ‘Wait, companion~?’

I answered the first. “In Grimoires, I tended to favor lore over magicks in that life. Magicks are, relatively, simple in comparison to the scale of the cosmos and all that writhed within. There were incantations and rituals, of course, but honestly, it was best to figure those things out for yourself if you could.

“The Book of Eibon was a good source of lore, containing a history of gods and godly war upon Earth. The Cultes des Goules was a book of necromancy; I burned that one. The Book of Azathoth was strangely, a travelogue of sorts; those who went on to serve the throne of Azathoth, dreaming center of the chaotic cosmos, would sign their names within in blood; from that one, I found only a single torn-out page in Crowley’s collection. Finally, there was the Necronomicon — Kitab al-Azif — the pinnacle of grimoires. Crowley had a few copied sections of it, but not the full book, which was a bit strange considering how that book seemed to like proliferating across the cosmos.”

“The Necronomicon, I have heard tell of it!” Sonya exclaimed. “I can’t imagine the version I know of is the one from those cosmos, thankfully, but the name is coincidental. Perhaps, if Daughter Death grants me leave, I will have to work on sourcing a copy for myself.”

“Denied. So freaking denied it’s not even funny,” Alice deadpanned.

“The idols were just manmade trinkets pilfered from various cultures, in the usual colonial way,” I answered the second. “Half of them didn’t have any power to them — honestly, I think they were children’s toys that deadbeat daddy dearest believed were something more. The few that were something weren’t anything big. Some fertility idols for one of Shub-Shub’s worshipped avatars, and a little statue of Squid-Face — those really were everywhere, though.”

“It was not all pagan gods and misled mortals in that cosmos, then?” Voivode clarified, sighing in relief. “That soothes the soul to know.”

I answered the last, chuckling fondly. “And Violet. Companions, yes. We became partners in all things, even if she had the adorable habit of trying to serve me rather than stand beside me. I stole her from deadbeat daddy dearest and never looked back. I was the one to name her properly. According to her, Crowley just called her Shoggoth.”

“​〴⋋_⋌〵” Cass glared. ‘Rude. Call him ‘primate’ and see how he likes it.’

“I feel like we’re going to need a whole history lesson on the cosmos if we want to understand half your references here,” Eustace noted.

“I genuinely don’t think I could give one,” I admitted. “I made collecting, keeping, and using eldritch knowledge my whole thing in that life, and even got to peek at the cosmos on my entry, but asking for a coherent timeline might be impossible even for ol’ Yoggy, Cosmic Knowledge Itself.”

“Yoggy-?” Jason began to ask before clamming himself up just as quickly.

I chuckled. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be telling this story if they had any chance of sneaking into this life. For all that they were effectively supreme in their cosmos, they aren’t, like, constants of Creation. Say their names all you’d like. They can’t hear you, and unless you really, really go out of your way to summon them, they’ll never be able to.”

“Thank Didi for that…” Jason sighed. “Our ‘verse has enough horrors as is.”

Didi laughed, “You’re welcome, but I don’t think I did much. I’m just as surprised as the rest of you that Sean ended up wherever Lovecraft’s twisted, sheltered, fearful mind pulled from.”

“Creation is better off with that cosmos being so contained,” Gabriel said, nodding emphatically.

Alice shuddered. “Yeah, Lovecraft’s mythos is much better experienced vicariously. Dad can have all of that… fun.”

“Speaking of, should I continue?” I asked. “My first ‘use’ of the cosmos?”

Sonya enthusiastically agreed. “Color me very intrigued! How did you bend that apathetic existence to your will? Were the grimoires useful? Were… sacrifices required?”

“Usually? Usually, my second move in that life would’ve required rituals, sacrifices, and decades of preparation. Oh, and thorough steps taken towards one’s protection.

“The latter, I could handle myself, much more effectively than the natives. Sanity of Self in the face of Scale; it was my biggest advantage. And I skipped a lot of the former by borrowing from deadbeat daddy dearest. See, there was one item in his collection that I abstained from mentioning, worth more than the rest combined. It was a large and ornate silver key-…”

IIIII

— Violet —

She did not remember the details of the ‘before’, nothing but… floating — yes, a sense of floating.

She did remember the moment that floating disappeared. It was replaced by an unnatural slipping and dripping and flipping all about. It was horrible, so very alien, but that sense was her new constant.

She’d been thrust back to life by the master’s magical machinations, yet… not. Whatever or whoever she’d been before, she was not anymore. Now, she was a monster of his creation.

 She didn’t know if she was thankful. She didn’t know if she was wholly hateful, either. It wasn’t like she’d been given a choice in the matter — any matter since her ‘Shoggothic’ rebirth. If she had, she imagined she would’ve taken it.

Like now, with the Young Master. She already knew she preferred to serve him. She already knew she preferred being Violet.

It was something so simple — a name. Yet she had never even thought to ask after coming to reside in her monstrous flesh. Master may have denied it of her, but the Young Master…? He gave her a piece of Self to call her own.

And thus, gladly, Violet would follow the Young Master through life and death and dream and all of the cosmos in between.

“Give me a hand, Violet?” The Young Master requested.

Violet, of course, obliged. It was her duty to serve, seemingly burned into her new state of being; that much was true with the master before and the Young Master now.

His request seemed simple. Violet stretched a hand from her shifting flesh as naturally as she no longer breathed. Then, with a jolt, she severed it. While uncomfortable, she could not call the feeling painful.

The Young Master saw the hand she offered him and sighed. “Not quite what I meant, darling.”

Panic…! Violently, Violet’s form began to bubble and boil at the thought of disappointing the Young Master. He soothed her without compromise.

“Hey, it’s still workable. You can still control it, can’t you? I just need you to help me draw the lines of the gate. A freeform stylus might even be better for the task!”

“What… is the task, Young Master?” Violet dared to ask.

“We’re going to get some questions answered,” The Young Master replied. “It won’t be a simple matter, but this key is… well, the key. It’s one of two, and powerful.”

Violet did not see. “It is a key, Young Master. I am unsure what more I am meant to glean from it.”

“See how it doesn’t rust or tarnish?” The Young Master asked, patiently walking Violet through the importance of the artifact he’d forcefully inherited from his father.

“See how it catches the light, just so? Those aren’t reflections on its surface. And those aren’t shadows it casts. This key, Silver and Stalwart, is an ancient tool. It’s been passed down from prior races of man; it’s attuned to only our kind in the cosmos. For humans alone, it will open the Gates.”

“You are learned and wise, Young Master,” Violet praised, unsure if her awe was coming through properly.

Whatever she’d communicated through her terrible form, it made the Young Master smile — Violet treasured the upturn of his lips.

“Just Sane, my dear. Just confidently sure of Self. And only enough to see. But then, sometimes, that’s all one needs to be.”

“I…” Violet hesitated. “Am I Sane, Young Master? How could I be? Torn from the before to now, I think myself mad at all times, I must admit… What manner of thing did the master make me? What manner of hope could possibly lie in my future now?”

“He did something terrible to you,” The Young Master admitted, and Violet knew dread. It was just as she’d feared to thin-…

The Young Master continued, “But still, you live. Let me ask you a simple question with a simple answer instead of lingering on mysteries, human motivation chief among them. Do you like the name ‘Violet’?”

“I do.” Violet’s answer came immediately and instinctively — a truth she’d already internalized from mere days with the Young Master.

“Then, Violet is you. You may have been thrust into a nature new to you, but Violet…? Violet is something you can take for yourself. Violet is someone you can be, rather than just a nameless hound. You’ll find sanity in that. And if you struggle still, simply lean on me.”

The Young Master smiled. It was a simple thing, a human thing. It made Violet’s alien heart beat and beat — a steady rhythm rather than the usual bubbling.

“I’ve seen, Violet, and yet, I remain. You’ve been turned, Violet, and yet, you remain. The cosmos will come as it will for both of us. It’ll try to drown us in Scale. As it does, though, we little people within and throughout — yes, even you as you are now — can lean on each other.”

“It’d be lonely to go this life alone. I would rather not,” He said, a casual, steadying amusement in his voice. “I would hope you’d rather not, too.”

She would. She really would rather not…

Violet had lost everything — maybe she’d never had anything in the first place, a mere creation of the master’s magic. ‘Shoggoth’. For years in the shadows of his collection, that’d been the only hint of her nature. The master — the overreaching madman dabbling in magicks twisted and atrocious — had denied her everything else.

His son, however, would not; Violet saw that now as he extended a hand to her without a single care for the dripping ink of her being.

“I-I am monstrous…” She protested.

“I think you’re amazing,” The Young Master calmly replied.

“I-I must stink of Hell.”

“You smell overwhelmingly of flowers, actually. It’s why I chose Violet.”

“I-I know nothing of the world, Young Master; how could I serve you-…?”

“And I know some things, but not all. I’ve seen… but there’s still so much more to see. Self may hold me fast, but scale is… wonderful and fascinating and so very worthy of exploration. I won’t ask you to serve me, Violet, but I’ll happily ask that you take my hand and experience the cosmos at my side.

“We’ll figure out the rest from there, yeah?”

Slowly, warily, Violet reached for his hand. She waited for him to recoil. The reaction never came.

When they touched, his hand was warm against her alien flesh. It was strong and solid… more so than she could put into words.

She was a monster, a writhing and shifting mass. He didn’t even flinch. He meant it, Violet realized; he meant every word. A smile came over her face, small and so very… her, so very Violet — just as the Young Master had named her.

“If you will have me, Young Master, I shall never leave your side.”

“Wonderful!” The Young Master grinned in earnest and changed the subject. “Now, let’s see about those answers. This may be… a lot, even for your physique. The Dreamlands won’t be too dangerous for you, but the Gates? Stay behind me when… Just stay behind me.”

“Young Master…?” Violet asked, growing concerned.

He was confident, though. So Sane and sure of Self. She could only trust him.

He’d taken them to stone ruins at the edge of a dark, dark forest. An arch led into the shadows, but beyond it, curiously, there were no signs of passage. Though Violet did not know much of magic, she could still recognize mysteries afoot.

The ink of her flesh had been used upon the arch — that task for which she’d given the Young Master ‘a hand’. Strange sigils, drawn meticulously, sucked in the light of the setting sun. They were protections for her, Violet realized; she could feel herself anchored to the physical world through them, and the consideration behind his efforts made her giddy.

Just as the glorious reds and pinks of sunset peaked, the Young Master held his key up to the falling rays. He turned it just once.

For some reason unknown to her, Violet was expecting more. Some three-by-three turns; the number sprang into her mind of its own accord.

The Young Master made no show of his magic. Purposefully, Violet knew from some inherited alien memory, for a show would invite things best left absent.

At once, the ruined arch exploded with all the intangible force of tumbling time and stagnant space. A portal appeared within, its rippling surface like a pond. Past and other worlds screamed the entirety of their histories in Violet’s senses, yet she couldn’t hear a thing.

Then, the GUIDE, the GUARDIAN, the KEEPER — Violet recoiled viscerally. Every alien instinct told her to run, and that running would do nothing; to hide, and that she would never escape its sight.

Through her turmoil, the Young Master stood solid. ‘Lean on me’, his words echoed as vibrations through Violet’s shifting shape. Frantically, she did. She clung to him, burying her face and all her eyes in his back as a futile attempt to escape from All-in-One and One-in-All.

He did not waver an inch, so Sane and so sure of Self. Scale, against the Young Master, fell utterly short. He would use it on his own terms. Violet knew, she saw, she lived a billion futures where the Young Master never wavered.

The Young Master called out to the THING beyond/within/embodying the Gate as casually as one might call out to an overworked librarian.

“Yo, Yoggy, got a moment to answer something for me?”

To Violet’s unending horror, the THING answered.

“ALL AND ONE; I HAVE MOMENTS TO SPARE. I KNOW ALL, AND I KNOW ONE, AND YET I KNOW YOU… NOT, REINCARNATOR.”