Swords v. Cthulhu

by Jesse Bullington

  “They burst into the cottage. I got away, but they followed me.”

  “Who?”

  Brother Arnold squeezed his eyes shut tight and clamped the cloth over his wounds. “The workmen.”

  “They’re not men anymore,” Richardis spat. “I barely got the door shut on them. Their fingers are like claws, their faces like beasts’.”

  Hildegard forced down another bite. She needed the strength. “The man from the river is like them,” she said. “Long ago he was a man: a man named Robold. The father of St. Rupertus.”

  “But Robold died when Rupertus was only a child,” Richardis exclaimed. The lives of the local saints provided the material for popular songs and nursery tales around the region. All the nuns knew the stories. “After his death, Berta raised Rupertus to be a good and Christian man.”

  “Yes,” Hildegard agreed. She pushed aside her bowl. “Robold fell into the river Nahe and drowned. I saw him go below the water in my vision.”

  “But he’s not dead any longer.” Sister Richardis rubbed her face. “I wish I could remember my nightmares when we first came here. I know they had something to do with the dead and their return to the Earth, but my mind was not made to hold such horrors.”

  “This resurrection is a mockery of the one promised to us all by the Lord. Robold’s life was given back to him by something that does not belong in our Creation. He has returned here because this place is somehow sacred to him or some infernal being.”

  “A demon?” Brother Arnold shook his head. “ Could he be a demon?”

  “I believe he is possessed or in servitude to such a foul creature.” Hildegard looked around the table. “Sister Richardis knows that God warned me this place would be a great sanctuary to all women who wish to serve Him — but only after we had faced a great test. This is the test. I don’t know what Robold plans to do here, but I do know that we cannot allow him to take Rupertsberg from us. The fate of all people everywhere hinges on us today.”

  These were peaceful men and women of God. They looked back at her with blatant terror, for none of them were fighters. Not a one of them had trained for anything more dangerous than embroidery or cheese-making or playing the psaltery. But God’s ways worked themselves out on a scale far larger than human reason, Hildegard reminded herself, and she had an idea, given to her by her enemies. Because these weren’t just peaceful men and women of God. These were members of the Benedictine order, and though they did not know it, they possessed all they needed to face this evil.

  Outside, something howled with a voice colder and crueler than a wolf. The forests of the Rhine and Nahe river valleys were places with dark legends and terrifying tales, and Hildegard knew every person in the room was now recalling them. Her time with God had made her certain there was truth in such tales. She had to show them that they belonged in a different kind of story.

  She slapped her palms down on the table. “We are Benedictines. We are an order of virtue and holiness, a force of good in the world. And we shall not let these demons shake our faith.”

  Marten stood up from his seat beside the fire. “God is with you, Mother Hildegard.”

  She looked around the table and saw the fear fade from their eyes. “God is with all of us.”

  “Can you go now?” Sister Guda hissed in pain. “Your heel is digging into my shoulder.”

  “Have strength, Sister,” Hildegard encouraged her. Guda’s already florid face flushed darker. Sister Richardis slipped over the windowsill and disappeared into the darkness.

  “I’m next,” Marten piped. He scrambled up onto the bench and then onto Guda’s broad shoulders. He hesitated only a moment before going over the edge.

  “I mislike sending him out there,” Brother Arnold whispered.

  “You next, Sister Diemud.” Hildegard gave the youngest of the nuns a squeeze on the shoulder. She turned back to the brother. His cuts had begun to scab, but they looked swollen and red. They would soon need a poultice lest they become septic. “They’re the only ones small enough to get through the gardening shed window,” she reminded him. “We need weapons.”

  The workman’s hoe had inspired the idea. Benedictine rule decreed that all communities must strive for self-sufficiency, and Hildegard’s first order of business building her priory had been the establishment of a large garden. Just as importantly, she had made sure her people had all the necessary tools to maintain an orchard and small farm.

  “I am a man of peace,” he began, but Hildegard hushed him with a wave of her hand.

  “At times, peace must be defended. Today we will be warriors of God. Tomorrow, we can repent.”

  “If there is a tomorrow,” a sister whispered, and someone else shushed her.

  Hildegard felt for her rosary. Her parents had given it to her before she had been shut away as an anchorite with Sister Jutta in Disibodenberg, a lifetime ago. It had been the only dependable comfort in her childhood. Loneliness had subsumed her in that quiet, closed up place, and it would have eaten her alive if she hadn’t had God by her side. His words had given Jutta a reason to educate the little girl. His words had changed her life.

  She rolled a bead between her fingers. Time and hard use had worn it smooth. Sometimes she still felt like that young girl, cloistered from the world. How little she knew about things like weapons and fighting. She could only pray she was doing the right thing.

  Silence lay over the priory’s muddy grounds. She tried to envision where Robold and his creatures might be, but nothing came to her. Construction had torn open the entire hillside, gouging open pits in the ground for harvesting sandstone and the usable remains of ancient ruins. Outside of this house, the other completed buildings were far too small to contain a group of any size. She closed her eyes and listened hard, her lips moving in silent prayer.

  “Mother Hildegard! We’ve the tools!”

  Marten’s voice came from far away. Hildegard opened her eyes and saw the others already moving around her. She squeezed her eyes shut again. She had seen something for a moment, a tiny hint of a vision. But now it was gone.

  “Mother, hurry!”

  She followed Ancilla out the door. The nuns’ temporary quarters sat on the flattest flank of the hill, and the ground here was much trammeled by carts and workers. Above, the night sky hung heavy, the clouds swollen and black over the distant gleaming of the stars. Nothing interrupted the priory’s stillness save for the slight clinking of her nuns distributing hoes and scythes and loppers.

  Hildegard’s preparations had served her nuns well. There were tools enough for all. As Sister Richardis stepped forward with her small hand scythe in one hand and a sharp trowel in the other, the clouds pulled away from the nearly full moon and gleamed on the makeshift weapons. Demon or not, Robold’s creatures wouldn’t care for a face full of good steel.

  “Mother Hildegard. I see you’ve come out to enjoy the night air.”

  Hildegard turned to face the man from the river. He stood on the other side of the broad work site, balanced on an outcropping of sandstone, with a mass of tentacled things crawling about his shoulders. His followers had dressed him in their garb, but he wore their cast-off hose and tunic as if they were ermine and cloth-of-gold. He grinned down at her, smug and certain.

  “Robold.” The man stiffened when he heard his true name, but the grin did not slip from his face. “You and your creatures are not welcome here on God’s land. Be you gone.”

  He leaped down from the stone. “This was my land long before it belonged to your Christian church. My wife and my puling son may have tried to undo my work here, but the god I serve will see my labors completed.”

  “How virtuous,” Hildegard said. She nodded to her left and her right. “But you see, my order has taken charge of this land.”

  Sister Diemud snapped the blades of her lopper together.

  A squelching and rustling came from behind Robold, and she saw the men who had once been her hired workers. Their skin clung tight to their bones, thei
r eyes like burnt-out hollows, and their teeth showed as if their lips had receded into their faces. These wizened creatures were men no longer, but mere husks.

  Robold had done this. She could feel his power drawing at her own life force. If they did nothing, he would drain the viriditas from all the land, just as he drained it from the men who so adored him.

  “Sweet merciful Jesus,” Brother Arnold whispered beside Hildegard.

  And then the sky rippled. Behind the dark clouds and the rich blackness that lay between the stars, a light pulsed. It was nearly purple, almost like the light Robold had called up in the infirmary, but it was like no purple Hildegard had ever seen. It strove against the firmaments of heaven, stretching them thin as it strained toward the wicked man from the river.

  Hildegard closed her eyes. She had seen this before, moments ago in that hint of a vision, but once before even that. God had shown her the nature of Creation, its beautiful shape and form like an egg cradling wonder instead of yolk. She had not understood the things that strained toward it from outside the universe God had built, but now she did. There were other gods in other creations, and they would swallow her own unless she stopped them.

  She opened her eyes again. Robold’s creatures had crept closer, but her nuns held firm. No one moved.

  “What do we do, Mother?” Richardis whispered.

  “We fight,” she ordered.

  Sister Richardis darted forward, trowel and scythe gleaming in the moonlight. Her blade caught the nearest man-husk in the throat and ripped through it with a sound of tearing vellum. The creature stood motionless for a second and then crumpled to the ground.

  “Ygnailh ygnaiih thflthkh’ngha Yog-Sothoth!”

  Robold’s shriek cut the air and the sky exploded.

  Hildegard’s feet went out from under her and she hit the ground hard. She twisted around and saw the shriveled hands that gripped her ankles. The rest of the skeleton pulled itself out of the ground, using Hildegard as a ladder.

  The dead were joining Rupertus’s workmen even as things unimaginable burst out of the sky. All around her, women screamed. Sister Ancilla leaped over a fallen man-husk and slammed a hatchet into the skull of a newly mobile skeleton. Hildegard scrabbled for her fallen walking stick and smashed the legs of the skeleton clambering over her. The thing tumbled off her.

  She jumped to her feet. Her heart lurched in her chest and she knew her fragile body was being pushed beyond its means, but she managed to bring up her stick and send the skeleton’s mummified head flying. A cool wind gusted against her back, and she whirled around.

  Dozens of wings flapped in a vortex of roiling tentacles, and at its heart was Robold. Tendrils of black oil curled about him, sliding up and down his human body and seeping under his skin. Whatever powers had brought him out of death, they had transformed him and subsumed him. Black inky splotches rained down out of the sky, but Hildegard kept her eyes on the stranger from the river. He had brought this to her land. He was the one she needed to destroy.

  She raised her stick above her head. “Glória tibi, Dómine.” She closed her eyes and opened herself to the power of God. “Laus tibi, Christe.”

  “Credo in unum Deum!” a small voice shouted, and she knew it was Marten, brave little Marten, and all around her she heard the others take up the cry.

  She lowered her staff and stared into the writhing heart of the thing that had once come out of the river. “I believe in one God,” she said, in the simple German that was her native tongue. “And it’s not yours.”

  A lance of emerald fire burst from the tip of her walking stick. Viriditas: the pure green glory of life, and the cleanest manifestation of God’s glory. She focused it on the unclean being in front of her and watched it burn off a thick black tentacle.

  “Enough!” Robold shouted, and slapped her aside with a black-dripping limb. Hildegard slammed into the wall of the nuns’ house and lay still, her head spinning. Robold’s oily ichor hissed as it seared into her skin.

  “Hildegard!” Richardis screamed. She raced toward Hildegard. Her veil slipped back on her head, revealing her golden hair. Her habit rode up to show her strong white legs. She looked like a queen out of one of Hildegard’s visions, all her power drawn from seemly virtue and the love of God’s creation.

  A creature of wavering mist and black twisted bones slammed into the young nun, driving her down into the mud. Its horrible snarl rose up above the chaos of shrieking and chanting and the man-husks’ mindless gurgling growls. Richardis shrieked in pain.

  Hildegard pulled herself upright. She had to get to Richardis. Had to protect her. Her heart raced and stammered in her chest.

  “No!” a voice cried out, and a slight figure threw itself at the creature of bone and mist. Something crunched horribly.

  “Marten,” she whispered. She saw her stick now, lying just a few feet away. She lurched toward it. A tentacle lashed out at her but overshot her wimple, and dropping to her knees, she grabbed the staff. “Get away from her, fiend!”

  Green light again flashed from her staff, piercing the bundle of smoke and bones and illuminating it with the fury of summer lightning. The creature howled in pain. For a moment, time seemed to stop, and then the beast exploded in a blast of ash and soot.

  Hildegard crawled toward the spot where Richardis had fallen. Her hand came down on something soft and warm and she pulled back in disgust, only to realize it was not some foul creature, but only Marten’s slender leg. She shook it. “Marten?”

  The boy did not move. She crawled closer to his face, his cheek pressed into the mud. He didn’t move. “Marten?” she whispered again.

  “Mother Hildegard?”

  The cracked voice was not the boy’s. “Richardis! You’re alive!”

  “Watch out,” the younger nun warned, and Hildegard sprang aside just as a claw-tipped hand raked at the air where she’d been.

  Robold laughed. “It’s almost over, my little nun. The veil between worlds has parted, and my god will be here soon.”

  His voice sounded human enough, but the rest of him had been subsumed in the evil he had brought forth through the tear in the sky. The stench of hot tar boiled off him, and black oily goo dripped from his every limb, uncountable as they seemed to be. Wings and tentacles and purple pincers wriggled and snapped all about him. His own gray eyes were lost in the cluster of leering orbs.

  Hildegard squared her shoulders. Marten had trusted her to do the right thing. Now she had to trust God.

  “By the spirit of God, I shall cast thee out.” She raised the staff one last time and opened herself up to the power of her faith.

  Viriditas.

  She floated in a sphere of perfect green. The breath of the trees and the grass and all the lovely green things of the world passed through her body, warm, gentle, and full of the sweetness of creation. The spirits of many beings wafted past her: fir trees and edelweiss, clover and mint, timothy hay and honeysuckle and plants she could not even name: all this and more. She was borne up on the emerald vision of God’s flora, one with all of them, green in and out.

  “Go!” she roared, and the breath of the plants rushed out with the word.

  Green.

  Green.

  Green.

  Skeletons burst into flower. Husk-men crumbled into puffballs and morels. Robold’s sick and alien form went stiff. His eyes widened. For an instant, they shone back at her, the gray melting into pools of emerald. He opened his mouth to cry out and a clump of ferns burst out of his lips.

  Thunder shook the entire hill. Hildegard turned her face up to the sky. Lightning, ordinary white lightning, flashed across the purple tear that ran between the stars. The sky shimmered for an instant. And then it went right, black and cloudy.

  The world smelled like rain.

  Water poured from the sky, sluicing away the remnants of Robold’s creatures. Hildegard’s nuns stood silently. They could only stare around themselves, wondering at all they had seen this dark night.

&
nbsp; “It was the boy,” Brother Arnold said. “He sacrificed himself for us all.”

  “It was God.” Hildegard blinked back tears. “It was all of us and it was God.”

  She turned her gaze to the strange tree that now grew beside her, its branches as twisted and contorted as an octopus’s tentacles. A clump of ferns grew out of its center. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen such green and lustrous ferns.

  Thunder rumbled again, the comforting sound of a world returned to order.

  Red Sails, Dark Moon

  Andrew S. Fuller

  Jinny woke to the taste of saltwater and the feel of warm sand against her body, nudged by a strange tide. Fine, dark green granules fell from her brown skin as she sat up on the unknown shore. She admired the crescent beach with its perfect cerulean waves lined by a deep gingko jungle, the ragged detail of distant slopes whose peaks were lost in crawling clouds, and the tall black towers rising just beyond the bay’s far point.

  Where she’d washed up from, she could not recall, nor any previous detail outside of her name. This loss troubled her deeply, but briefly, as the extravagant view and open air brought her release. She wandered freely along the shore toward the thin angular structures.

  Her eyes followed the graceful pattern of breaking surf out to the rolling sea, where she glimpsed enormous dark twisting shapes beneath the surface, and the occasional green face staring back with lucent eyes from a curling wave. Strolling away from the foamy breakers, she heard a pleasing trill among the whispering trees. The resonant song drew her toward a dazzling plumage within the swaying leaves.

  Suddenly a group of cats circled her legs, their soft gray and black striped bodies weaving between her feet. A dozen swift felines pressed her away from the bewitching feathers and dripping serrated beak, steering her into a straight path between water and trees. Satisfied with her direction, they leapt away into the shadows and the sun’s dim glare.