Chapter Twenty.

"Hostile aetheric presence detected."

Spook's voice cut through the link with alarm.

"Hostile what now?" I replied, ordering the minions into a guard position as I tried to figure out what he meant.

"Mana-pulse inbound. Brace for impact in 3...2...1…"

A shockwave rippled through the water towards us and we hurriedly hunkered down for it. With a flash of disturbed water, it rolled over us and was gone. Is that it?

"Mana-pulse objective determined. Hostile aetheric presence is now broadcasting our position."

To my growing alarm, I watched as the swarms of scavengers quickly fled away from us. In moments the water around us was completely empty except for the corpses.

"Uh… shit. Move! Let's go!"

Absorbing the minions I picked a direction at random and shot off as fast as I could. Fleeing through the kaiju graveyard at a breakneck pace, Spook periodically poked his head out to make another scan.

"Enemy is matching velocity. Multiple hostile bioforms inbound. Marking."

A dull red glow began to spread out on the horizon behind us—the incoming hostiles projected to my vision from Spook via the link. Well somebody got a lot smarter in this evolution, and that would be so cool if we weren't running for our lives again. The line of glowing red shapes began to spread across my vision, startling me with how quickly it turned from a chase to a complete encirclement.

With our options dwindling and escape cut off, I dived for one of the more intact kaiju corpses that looked like a giant, armored hammerhead shark with too many fins. While it was covered in small (relatively, it was a kaiju) wounds, the armor was mostly intact except for a gaping hole a couple of hundred meters wide in the belly—probably what killed it to begin with.

Darting into the open wound, I tossed out my minions and began barking orders.

“Pollo, Gnaw! We’re surrounded by biomass, I need you two to make this place as defensible as possible. Try to seal up as many holes as you can. Skritter—help them until the enemy comes and protect them while they work. Spook you’re on overwatch, get yourself hidden as best you can, and keep sending me info. Itchy, Theo and I are going to try and hold off this—” I eyed the enormous hole we’d entered through. “—gap. Let’s go!”

The two [Blightshapers] nodded hurriedly and swam away with Skritter hovering protectively. All their tentacle-arms began spewing blight-resin-like fire hoses, periodically stabbing into the dead tissue as it began mutating before my eyes. In just a few moments they were gone from sight—some of the smaller rents where they’d disappeared already healing over with mutated blight tissue.

From above us came Spook’s warning.

“Hostile arrival imminent!”

Focusing on the outside now I saw them coming. From a distance it looked like a tide of swarming maggots, I couldn’t hold back my disgust as they approached and their appearance became more clear. Each one was a pale and squirming mass of slimy tentacles just over two meters long. Their skin was broken and pitted with sores, stretched too thin over a sinuous body topped by a lamprey’s mouth. The only sound was their writhing bodies churning through the water as they came at us by the hundreds.

Nightmare mass of tentacles, huh? Two can play that game.

Using my shapeshifting, my body ballooned outwards and solidified from its condensed liquid form. Pseudopods and tendrils shot out from gaps between hungry mouths and dozens of eyes. [Law] spread out around me and lit the dark water with the deep red of dying stars. I could feel the hungry thing in the back of my mind clawing for release, and [Law] demanding these interlopers suffer. I considered holding myself back—staying rational—but I’d been doing this for too long. I was tired. The beast wanted free… and I let it out.

Despite the direness of the situation, I felt rapturous elation bubble up in my mind as the tide of creatures approached.

“KilL tHeM ALL!”

They crossed into my domain, and all hell broke loose.

All my planning was abandoned in a heartbeat as emotions combined into something I’d never experienced and overwhelmed me. It was bliss... it was rage… hatred so dark it strangled thought. And smothering everything was endless, gnawing hunger.

My body shot forward on its own—too eager to feed for it to wait any longer. Dozens of tentacles speared out into the water and stabbed into squirming flesh. Their frantic struggles had me giggling uncontrollably as my flesh liquified them alive for digestion.

A flex of my aura had the water around me start to spin in an omnidirectional whirlpool with me at the center. The nature of water had it even extending beyond my influence, the whirlpool growing steadily as I fed it more and more power. I laughed as the nearby monsters poured towards me.

“YesSss! ComE LitTLe moRsEls!”

I spun and thrashed in the water, freely letting myself spin in the whirlpool’s embrace. Every movement had my tendrils stretching out into the water, wrapping around my assailants and ripping them to pieces. More of them piled on, willingly throwing themselves at me in a foolish attempt to overwhelm me. Their lamprey mouths latched onto me only to be dissolved by my ravenous flesh.

An intermittent buzzing distracted from the glory of my slaughter. A hundred mouths frowned as it tugged at some small portion of my awareness.

“—Boss, we—can’t—need hel—”

The buzzing voice was annoying but easily ignored. I could feel the two parts of my nature—[Law] and my primal self—growing closer together with every passing moment. My control and my power grew, whirling tendrils reaching out farther into the dark to drag more wriggling victims into my maws. The universe itself even confirmed my course!

Requirements met.

Sub-trait [Advanced Mortal Shell] becomes [Shoggoth’s Transformation]

Removed biomass cost to transform. Removed limitations on limbs/organs. Can modify shape to meet needs without existing patterns. Complete individual transformations no longer possible due to Shoggoth constitution.

A shapeless, limitless mass of undulating flesh, the Shoggoth is the pinnacle of transformation. Its multitude of limbs can assume almost any shape or structure—limited only by the Shoggoth’s imagination. Cast aside the frailties of mortal flesh, and become something greater!

Attention.

Host synchronization rate increased.

New synchronization rate: 26.92%

Power flooded my limbs as blackened tendrils abruptly grew claws and teeth. My strength multiplied and the already paper-thin defense of my enemies disappeared entirely. Gibbering laughter echoed in the water until my attackers suddenly stopped and backed away in eerie unison. A sibilant voice hissed from the darkness beyond them and words poured into my unwilling mind—dousing my power-induced euphoria like a bucket of ice water. It carried a sense of immense weight, the sounds alone crushing me into the ground.

“Is this all you are… little flesh-thief?”

Stunned silence was the only reply I could muster. I’d never felt anything like the power behind those words. [Soul Tongue]—the trait that allowed me to understand any attempts to communicate with me—hadn’t translated them. Whatever was speaking had decreed to the universe that it would be understood, the act of giving voice bending the world to its will.

“This is all you have accomplished with my legacy?”

Finally forcing myself to speak, I barely managed to stutter out, “I… I don’t—”

“Within your stolen body I placed the tools of Conquest. I created a weapon of perfection that would have brought ruin to all that opposed you. At last, I find you… and you have squandered it.”

The voice boomed in my mind, fury filling every syllable as the words wracked me with pain.

“You think Haven lacks for some shapeless mass? One more mindless, hungry thing lurking in the darkness? The weapon I birthed of mine own essence was a thing of armies! Limitless legions to face any power of the surface. And you have created… six.”

The mass of floating leech monsters suddenly turned on each other, piling together into a frenzied ball of diseased tissue. As they ripped each other apart, their individual forms grew less distinct until all that was left was a towering monster of squirming tentacles—their violent cannibalism somehow fusing them together into an unholy whole. When it spoke again, the voice no longer threatened to kill me with just the sound.

“Thankfully, fate has delivered you unto me before the damage was too great—before your weakness could take root. And even given me a ready tool for correction.”

“Who… what are you?” I gasped out, trying to recover. It responded in a sing-song voice that susurrated unpleasantly through my mind.

“I? I have many titles, flesh-thief.

I am dregs… and dross.

Filth… and waste.

Wreck… and ruin.

Vermin… and vile.

I am the inevitability of decay and corruption, enemy to all who would bring order to these depths. The Old Ones who wandered this world called me... Dezzahn, the Corruptor. I have been looking for you since your birth stole the flesh you now wear from me. And now that I have you—seen the failure you have become—I will be taking it back.”

I screamed as hundreds of tentacles dove into my gelatinous body, no longer impeded by my devouring. They were invincible, and they dug deep into my being before they started to pull.

Attention.

Sub-trait [Shoggoth’s Transformation] lost.

With a wrenching sensation that ripped all the way down to my soul, my most recent upgrade vanished as quickly as it had come. My form lost distinction, senses I didn’t even know I’d already begun to rely on disappeared—making the world that much harder to perceive.

“Pathetic. So desperate to reclaim what was lost, and yet in a moment of weakness you cast it all aside. For what? Would this Shoggoth have done aught but burn before the might of the Mage Lords?”

The writhing tentacles twisted and pulled once again. I tried to resist, pulling back against the invasion with everything I had.

“Struggle if you wish, it will not change the outcome.”

Attention.

Sub-trait [Advanced Mortal Shell] lost.

Dezzahn chuckled as another of my abilities was taken.

“A shell? How apt to describe you. Hollow thing, outsider in stolen flesh. Child who would play the game of gods and think to suffer no consequence.”

The world around me dimmed as much of my shape-shifting ability left, flowing down the monster’s tentacles as they dug ever deeper. I could barely even make out my tormentor through the encroaching formless grey that was my senses before I evolved.

Nothing I did to free myself worked. My will was an ant compared to Dezzahn, [Law] was crushed out of existence before I could even begin to summon it. Black despair burned in my mind as I watched all of my progress draining away helplessly.

“Such wasted potential. Had you accepted your nature—grown in the path laid out to you—instead of chasing after the weakness of your nostalgia for human form, I might have allowed you to live. Perhaps continue to serve me as I raised an unstoppable horde to reclaim the surface. Alas…”

Attention.

Sub-trait [Mortal Shell] lost.

“And now we come to the end. The great power I had envisioned to embark on the path of conquest. With its reclamation, I shall begin a new age on Haven. An age of fear, and darkness. We shall extinguish those lingering wards left behind by the Achorai in a tide of Blight unlike any this world has ever seen, and return me to my rightful place.”

Darkness had swallowed my vision. I was back to my first days on Haven, the world an indistinct blur more than a few meters away. Trapped as an angry little puddle of black ooze, pinned under a monster I couldn’t possibly defeat because of my own mistakes.

I thought of the [Blightlings], who I’d abandoned in this fight. Guilt overwhelmed me as I remembered my dismissal of their cries for help, thinking of them as an annoyance impeding my own growth while I lost myself in delusional power fantasies. For all his taunting, Dezzahn was right. If I’d focused on growing my minions instead of trying to reconnect with humanity—a humanity that seemed hell-bent on killing me—maybe they’d have had the help they needed.

I’m so sorry guys…

“Is ok boss, we ready to save you now!”

I barely registered the words before a colossal crash shook my surroundings and Dezzahn’s oppressive will abruptly lifted. With desperate strength I lashed out with [Law], flooding my aura with the black energy of pure destruction and severing the tentacles that bound me to him. A pained screech of psychic energy blasted out from the monster and I felt him flinch back.

A jolt rocked me and I panicked until I realized the Skritter had darted up to me and scooped me up in his clawed secondary paws. Diminished as I was, it was easy for him to carry me and I didn’t even have the strength to struggle or help him in any way. Reaching out through the link, I felt all six of my minions burning bright—coordinating with each other to hold off Dezzahn and escape. With shock, I realized what the crash that had freed me was.

Pollo and Gnaw had revived the shark-kaiju.

The titanic beast was still covered in wounds and barely even moving, but “barely” is more than enough when you’re the size of a small island. I allowed myself to hope for a minute that it would defeat Dezzahn and we could find a way to get my abilities back, but my hopes were dashed as Pollo grimaced and spoke through the link.

“Not going to last much longer, too soon for fighting. Enemy is too strong, body too rotten. Need to find a way out.”

Spook had been swimming alongside us as we all sped through the water away from the battle going on behind us. He spoke up quietly, “Possible solution detected, small break in undersea column nearby. Goes deep, beyond my range. It will be enough.”

They all changed course following Spook’s directions and we quickly approached the stone column he’d found. Hidden towards the bottom was a small, oddly round hole less than half a meter across. Water was rushing into it powerfully, and even from several meters away I could feel a strong suction force that only Skritter’s arms kept me from getting pulled in.

An uneasy feeling crept into my mind as my minions looked at each other, a decision flashing through the link faster than I could catch it.

“You go now boss, escape down. Not all gonna fit down there, we keep the big thing busy for a while.”

NO.

“You guys are coming with me. End of discussion. I’ll absorb you guys like before and we’ll all stick together.”

Skritter held me up, his paws easily encompassing my whole body with how much I’d lost. He shook his head and sent a comforting feeling through the link.

“Too small now boss, monster took too much. Sorry, tried to save you faster but had to get the shark moving first. No other way.”

The [Blightlings] all gathered around me, trying to reassure me through the link as I denied what they were saying. They have to be wrong. There has to be a way! I tried frantically to absorb them, but I barely managed to stretch myself over their now-massive claws before the long-absent sensation of pulling myself apart forced me to stop.

“No, no… guys please don’t do this… this is my fault, please I’ll find a way! We can still make it! I’ll use my magic, I can make the hole bigger! We can—”

“Fight is over, hostile approaching rapidly.”

Skritter squeezed my tightly against his chest for a moment, the others all crowding around as they told me goodbye. Their monstrous appearance completely overshadowed by their loyalty, their love despite my failings.

“Take care boss. See you again someday, yeah?”

Then he let go.

The powerful current ripped me away, my small body shooting through the gap at insane speed and rocketing down into the earth. I screamed as the link grew fainter and fainter until it finally vanished. All that was left was rushing water, carrying me deeper than I'd ever imagined possible into the unknown.