by T. K. Kato
Still, it had to be around midnight now, if not later. So poor Smith was as good as dead, and I didn’t have so much time before the dozen or so cultists out there made it back here. Already they’d taken most of the rowboats, leaving only a few tied to the piers.
Low tide exposed more of Devil Reef, and I wondered if midnight was just a coincidence with the timing of the tides today. I didn’t know enough about nautical crap to really be sure. But … but Devil Reef was a location on the map. One I hadn’t even really considered.
Huh.
It made sense. The first gem had been set in a sacrificial altar beneath the Mason hall. Why shouldn’t this one be located at the site of another sacrifice?
With a glance around to make certain no Deep Ones were too close, I dropped down into one of the remaining rowboats, pulled the rope free, and shoved off. I hadn’t rowed a boat in years. Not since … since a class trip in middle school. Actually, it had been one of the first times I’d talked much to Elise, together in that boat.
The strange coincidence made me smile as I tugged awkwardly at the oars. Despite my inexperience, I managed to get the boat moving more or less in the right direction, though I had to shift to correct a few times. It took longer than it had any right to before I reached the island, and my arms were sore as I climbed out of the boat.
+1 Might
I chuckled at that. My amusement didn’t last too long, though. A bunch of robed figures—their hoods now thrown back to expose hideously deformed faces in the lantern light—clustered together not far from me. The ground here was coarse black rock, slick rather than sandy, and I had to watch my footing.
The gaggle of cultists stood in a ring around someone, chanting up Cthulhu and Dagon and Mother Hydra. Between the choruses of their chanting, I caught wind of gasping coming from poor Smith, who sounded as if they’d bound and gagged him.
A pair of other cultists stood outside the ring, pistols in their hands, no doubt keeping watch.
But then, I was still camouflaged. I crept up behind one and grabbed him around the throat, slapping my hand over his mouth. I was getting good at these stealth takedowns. The other guard didn’t even look away from the ritual nor hear a sound over the chanting.
+1 Stealth
+1 Might
I eased the body to the ground, then snatched up his pistol. Only two cultists with guns drawn … I could do this, but I needed to be fast. I leveled the gun at the guard and my open palm at the nearest other cultists.
So, I’ve never shot a real gun. I’ve played arcade games with guns. I’ve played Duck Hunt. I’ve played an assload of FPSs. But a real gun … not so much. Still, from five feet away, with time to aim, I figured I had this.
I squeezed the trigger. The recoil of it threw my arm back, catching me off guard, as did the enormously loud report of the gun.
25 Damage
The guard fell, clutching his throat where the bullet had apparently hit him. I’d been aiming for his head, but that worked.
+1 Dex
The chanting stopped. The other cultists spun on me. And I thrust my palm out even as I brought the gun around to bear again. My first telekinetic blast caught four of the tightly clustered goons, sending a barrage of damage numbers flashing across my screen. Some of them turned to particles from a single hit.
One-shotted. Hell yeah.
I fired the gun again.
Missed.
That was okay. I jerked up my palm up once more, and another blast wave hurled back those cultists trying to close in.
20 Damage
20 Damage
20 Damage
20 Damage
My pistol reported again.
17 Damage
A cultist spun around and fell, blood spurting from his shoulder.
+1 Dex
Another blast wave struck one who tried to close with me. The ripple caught him and hurled into the ocean.
Green particles drifted up into the sky as bodies vanished. I fired again and again, interspersing the pistol shots with telekinetic blasts.
-1 Sanity
And then there was just one cultist left, struggling to rise from the ground after a blast had thrown him prone.
“Not your day, huh?” I leveled the gun at him.
“Great Cthulhu lies dead and dreaming—”
A bullet put an end to his speech.
Figuring the gun had to be about empty, I ditched it in favor of the other guard’s pistol.
Amidst the chaos, Smith was there, chained to a rock. The man had worked his hands around enough he managed to pull a gag from his mouth. “You!”
“Me.”
Embedded in the rock above his head lay a gem. Despite having just killed all those cultists, it remained dark and lifeless. Offering no power and unlocking no gate. And while I stood here thinking, the Deep Ones had probably heard the gunfire.
I frowned at the gem, then at Smith.
“What are you waiting for?” Smith demanded. “Do something!”
I sighed. Yeah, he was right. I was going to have to do something here. I pointed the gun at him. “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn!”
And then I squeezed the trigger.
Smith’s head exploded, spraying me with blood. My ears were still ringing from the gunshot when his body began to evaporate. The orange gem began to glow.
Finally.
-3 Sanity
+3 Lore
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I could feel the dizziness coming on. The power …
Eldritch Power Acquired
I wiped Smith’s blood off my face and grinned. Hell yeah, assholes. Let’s see what I’ve got now.
“Access Menu”
Stats:
HP 9/22
Dex 26
Might 26
Cha 24
Stealth 32
Sanity 30
Lore 13
Currency 11
Inventory:
Flashlight
Lock picks
Crowbar
Pistol
Deep One book
Jerky x2
Bandage x2
Eldritch Powers:
Telekinetic Blast
Telekinetic Lift
Tongues
Camouflage
Spatial Warp
Spatial warp? What the hell was that? Whatever it was, it sounded cool. I waved my hands around in a wild attempt to test it. When I swept both hands around like I was doing the breast stroke, the world around me bent, as if it had become a ripple on water. The effect was twinned some twenty feet away, where I’d focused my eyes.
Before I could even process what I’d just seen, I stumbled forward, sucked into the distortion. Everything spun around me for a split second and I was standing somewhere else. Dazed and a little nauseated, I turned about. I’d … moved. I was standing in about the same location I’d been looking at, elsewhere on the island.
Reality snapped back into place with an audible twang that sent my ears popping and left me feeling like someone had fired me from a giant slingshot.
So this was some kind of teleportation power? If I could figure out how to control it, I’d be …
Shadows sped through the water, swimming many times faster than any human could manage. A lot of shadows.
Deep Ones, no doubt, drawn by the gunfire and chaos I’d just created. Even as I raised the pistol, one of them sprang out of the water, flew several feet through the air, and landed upon the rocky shore. I squeezed the trigger.
The Deep One jerked as the bullet hit home.
18 Damage
Dark blood streamed down from the wound I’d inflicted in its shoulder. The hit slowed it only a moment, though, and then it was racing toward me once again. I fired twice more, more damage numbers scrolling past my eyes. The third bullet dropped my target, but even as it fell, another of the creatures launched itself into the air.
I spun, fired again.
M
issed.
Two more shots.
18 Damage
27 Damage
That last one hit the Deep One in the head and dropped it at once. At least a dozen more of those creatures were closing in. There was no way I’d take all of these bastards, even if I had the ammo. And I kind of figured the pistol must be running low.
I backed away.
Just how far out could I warp space? Locking my focus on a house across the bay, out by the wharves, I swept my hands apart. The air and ground around me shimmered, then twisted like it was spiraling down a drain.
A tremendous cracking sound filled my ears as planks and bricks from the house bent, splintered, or ripped themselves in half. Debris flew up past my face as I pitched forward.
A pair of Deep Ones leapt from the sea and landed before me, but my vantage had already shifted. I stumbled forward, landing on my knees.
-1 Sanity
When I looked up, I was inside a crumbling house. The front wall looked like some giant shark had taken a bite out of it. My power had ripped through the walls, tearing wooden planks to pieces and shredding the brick foundations with equal ease.
Holy hell.
In the chaos and dust, shouts and croaks filled the night, all converging on me. I tapped my chest to activate the camouflage and then made a break for it. Half running, half stumbling, I escaped the ruined house and ran headlong into the wall of the adjacent building.
The impact hurt a little, but despite it all, laughter threatened to seize me. I felt a chuckle rising in my chest, trying to explode outward.
Holy hell!
I’d not only teleported, I’d brought down a whole damn building in the process. Euphoria at the overwhelming sense of power claimed me. Even as Deep Ones wended into the wreckage I’d created, my fingers twitched. How many ways could I kill these monsters now? Could I warp one of them into a building? Could I drop a building onto them?
Or maybe just avoid them no matter their numbers. Between my stealth abilities and now teleportation, none of these goons could catch me.
Grinning, I dared to stalk right past a Deep One on my way out.
I allowed more Deep Ones to pass me by, deciding not to push my luck any further. If I drew too close, sooner or later one would notice the shimmer of my camouflage, and then there’d be a bunch of running, shooting, and probably rapidly falling Sanity. That way madness lay, right?
So when I had seen no more of them for a few minutes, I resumed my trek around the wharves, passing into numerous little alleys between the homes and other dilapidated buildings there. From some of those houses, I heard scuffling or croaks or other signs of inhabitants, yet all seemed boarded over or locked.
Finally, I clucked my tongue and turned slowly about. If Zadok was right and these houses were connected by tunnels into some kind of warrens or breeding grounds, it shouldn’t matter which house I chose. Any of them might lead me to tunnels. The very idea of wending my way through such an enclosed and likely horrific space raised the hair on my arms.
Yeah, I mean, it frightened me for certain, but also … This was the last gem. With each of these seals I uncovered, I grew stronger, more powerful. I had exceeded limits I didn’t even know existed when I first came to Innsmouth. How much further might I come by achieving this last goal? I had become like a living god with these powers.
So did I want to test the limits of my ability? Hell yeah I did.
I trained my focus on the nearest house, then hesitated and glanced around to make sure all was clear. Could I warp space in two locations not including the place I stood? Such a tactic might prove incredibly useful when faced with large numbers of foes. As best I could, I split my focus, intent on both the house itself and the street in front of it.
Slowly, careful to keep my gaze on both locations at once, I drew my hands back to my chest, then pulled them apart in a swift motion. The world shifted before me. The street rippled like water, planks and bedrock suddenly bubbling to its surface. At the same time, the wall around the house fell away, replaced with crumbling dirt from the street.
-1 Sanity
Reality popped back into place, leaving a gaping hole in the house, and a pile of wood and debris embedded in the road, jutting up at impossible angles.
My camouflage faded the same instant I activated the other power, and before I could recover, a pair of cultists came shambling out of the ruined house, croaking about the rising god. That brought a smile to my face, albeit a grim one after catching a better glimpse of these two.
They wore no robes, making their deformities all too plain. These were worse than any I’d encountered thus far, with eyes already as large and opalescent as the Deep Ones, set in a still half-human skull, and teeth elongated and too large for their mouths. I shuddered. Somehow, the half-human hybrids were worse than the fully transformed Deep Ones.
Their croaking would alert their brethren, and soon I’d be back to having an army of cultists and Deep Ones breathing down my neck. It would defeat the whole purpose of not blasting my way into the warrens earlier. Intent to silence them immediately, I focused on the ground beneath them and on the house, then jerked my hands apart.
They plummeted for a split second before I let reality snap back into the place. It did so violently, leaving the torso of each cultist embedded in the street before me, while their legs popped up inside the house. The pair sputtered up blood, spasmed, and fell still in the space of a few hideous seconds.
-1 Sanity
My stomach lurched at the macabre scene I’d created. When they finally began to evaporate into green particles, I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding and had to suppress a shudder. That had turned more disgusting than I’d anticipated.
I cast a glance around, but so far, no one had come to investigate the calls of the dead cultists. Not wanting to be around if and when someone did show up, I stalked into the house where the two had been dwelling. Even disregarding the hole I’d ripped in the wall, the place was in shambles.
Cobwebs littered the corners and stretched across the ceiling. Years’ worth of dust caked the windowsills. The only thing up-to-date in the whole place was a bathtub in one corner, still filled with murky waters that stank like a swamp.
Grimacing, I ducked through to the other room—an unused kitchen. In this, I found an unlocked door that led to stairs descending into a pitch black basement. I flipped on the flashlight and started down, shutting the door behind me to cut off any sign of my light. A noxious smell wafted up from the opening, and I had to cover my mouth and nose to diminish it.
With each step I took, the wooden staircase groaned under my weight, clearly having not been maintained in decades. Would there be more deformed cultists down here? I swung my flashlight about the basement before daring to step off the stairs. Really, it looked more like a cellar here, stocked with barrels of water and crates of salted fish—the source of the stench.
No sign of any more natives, at least. I drifted around the cellar. A gaping hole broke through one wall, looking not unlike the jagged rips in reality my new power tended to leave. This hole revealed an earthen tunnel, propped up by occasional wooden support beams.
A musty reek filled the tunnels here too, like sulfur and decaying flesh. I shone my light inside. It seemed to go a long way back.
It seemed I’d found my way into the warrens beneath Innsmouth.
Stage 6
The tunnel ceiling reached no more than six feet high, with support beams occasionally dipping low enough that I had to duck to avoid them. A few minutes in here and I was already feeling claustrophobic, as well as more than a little lightheaded from the intense odor and even more intense darkness. The paths broke off occasionally, seeming to criss-cross in a maze that left me wandering around blind.
I’d traded my map for a crowbar, though honestly, I wasn’t sure how much help a map of the surface would have been in navigating these underground passages. Instead, I clung to the left wall, taking each turn as I cam
e to it, and altering my pattern only when I became convinced I’d doubled back into intersections I’d already passed.
See, here’s when I could have used some literal breadcrumbs to sprinkle and mark my passage. Lacking any such option, I paused at a four-way. The walls were tightly packed, rough dirt. So … Using the crowbar, I scraped an arrow into the wall indicating the way I intended to head. If I came through here again, at least I could be certain it was the same place.
Satisfied, I moved on. This path didn’t double back, though, as it turned out. Instead, it revealed a light source coming from up ahead. I flicked off my flashlight and paused. Going another way I might be able to avoid further conflicts with the cultists. On the other hand, chances were I’d have to go through some of these goons to get to the gem. That being the case, maybe it was better to begin clearing them out now.
With a slight sigh, I tapped my chest to activate my camouflage, then crept forward. The path opened up into a low-ceilinged chamber with a great muddy pool in the middle. A dozen of those half-transformed cultists lounged about this, the light coming from a glass-cased lantern by the water.
The nearest of these abominations was rubbing his gums, clearly in discomfort as what looked like the beginning of a shark tooth was rising up. He had no human teeth left in his whole mouth, so I could only imagine his new ones had already forced his original teeth out.
Even if I could sneak past these creatures, killing them seemed almost a mercy. The thought of what they were going through … Well, my stomach turned at it. I crept up close behind the cultist messing with his gums, raised the crowbar, and slammed it down atop his head.
23 Damage
The jagged end of it embedded in his skull and stuck fast, splattering me with blood as it did so. The cultist pitched over, and almost immediately he began to evaporate, freeing my weapon. A croaking shout went up from the nearest of the creatures, but my camo had remained intact.
Nice.
So I could melee these guys without losing it, just not use another power. I stepped up and took a two-handed swing at the jaw of the shouting cultist.
