Chapter 17

As Ode plummeted to the deepest depths of the ocean, he almost felt as if there was light in the sea.

Those bizarrely shaped creatures swam indifferently past him. Some were drawn to the blood cloud billowing from his chest and abdomen, but far more surged upward without a backward glance, as though summoned.

Up there loomed a massive shadow, falling powerlessly just like him, trailing an even thicker mist of blood. It continued until the creature’s bloated belly slammed into the seabed, sending up a vast plume of turbidity.

“…” The shockwave tossed Ode’s limp body upward for an instant before it sank back down, helpless as an autumn leaf.

But that wasn’t so bad, he thought, as his consciousness began to shatter apart. He’d saved Lola successfully, and Dagon had been destroyed alongside him. Even if he lived another ten or twenty years, could he hope for a more glorious feat than this?

That was enough.

—You know, he was actually pretty lucky.

Even in his final moments, he clung to his human reason rather than devolving completely into a monster. Before today, he’d imagined his only end would be to turn himself in at GORCC and beg Faust and the others to kill him before the transformation was complete.

Ode struck the seabed. Soft coral polyps extended delicate tentacles from their hard shells to cradle him, evoking the sensation of lying once more on the grand bed in his ancestral home.

…How long had it been since he’d last lain in the bedroom of that ancestral home? Two days? No, that wasn’t right…

On May 23rd, the bank had evicted him from the house. On the 24th, he’d gone to Dreamcatcher Town. Then came the memory loss… On June 2nd, he’d stumbled out of the town… rushed back to London… sought loans, only to be arrested, then regressed to May 24th. Attacked by the Deep One undercover agent. Attacked by Cavendish. Purged The Colour Out of Space. Infiltrated the Deep One Outpost. Cleared out the Deep Ones. And finally, mutual destruction with Dagon…

So much had happened. Ode slowly closed his eyes, inwardly grumbling to the grandfather who could no longer hear him. Including the seven days he’d lost to amnesia, it had only been nine days in total. So why was he this exhausted?

He was still too weak. The slightest hardship, and already he harbored thoughts that life was too tiring. But…

Wasn’t it all right to be weak for just a little while? He truly had no strength left.

After all… the last person in the world who had any right to reproach him had already departed far from him on the day he’d been thrown out. Grandfather’s corpse… perhaps it would rot alongside his own.

But that was fine. The next time they met, if Grandfather scolded him for it, he would respond just as unreasonably as he had in childhood: It’s your fault, Grandfather. Who asked you to abandon me first? Look—now neither of our bodies has anyone left to bury them.

In the lightless abyss, Ode’s right hand—now little more than exposed bone and ragged flesh—loosened its grip on the trigger. The shotgun slipped free.

Meanwhile, up on the storm-lashed surface.

Torrential rain churned the ink-black sea into treacherous waves. On the pitching rescue ship, Lola’s clothes and hair were soaked through. She thrashed desperately, trying to wrench free from the patrolman’s grip as he held her back with urgent pleas. Her shrill voice, raw with sobs and fury, wavered against the howling gale: “No!! You don’t understand! We can’t turn back!! That man—the one who saved us—he’s still down there in the sea! He can’t handle that monster! He’ll die!”

The patrolman, equally drenched, could only cling to the little girl to keep her from hurling herself overboard: “Think about it, kid! Even if we all jumped in, what good would it do?! You think any of us can hold our breath for more than a minute underwater? If the man you’re talking about really has what it takes to battle a monster dozens of meters tall, he’ll make it back on his own!”

“He won’t!” Lola screamed the words through choking tears before collapsing to her knees on the deck. In that moment, she understood more clearly than ever that her rage sprang from hatred of her own helplessness. “He wants to die! Don’t you get it? He doesn’t want to live! I don’t know why… but that madman, that freak—he has no will to survive whatsoever…”

Lola’s gaze, brimming with despair and helplessness, fixed on the roiling waves.

She nearly hated herself for it—hated why she couldn’t grow up faster, why she had to be such a powerless little girl.

All those times, kneeling between bookshelves with anatomy texts cradled in her lap, she’d smugly imagined them as holy writ from God himself, convinced that wielding a scalpel would let her save any life. And yet here she was, clutching her chalcedony shard, able only to watch helplessly as her rescuer marched to his death.

“Child, child…” The sheriff seized the deck railing and shoved his way forward through the crowd amid the ship’s wild rolls, enveloping her in a firm, warm embrace. “You’ve done more than enough! You’ve done plenty… Not many kids your age could have saved so many adults. That’s work for grown-ups—”

“Will he come back?” Lola heard her own voice ask, numb and flat. “Will I get to see him rise from the waves again?”

He wouldn’t. How could she dare hope that a man bent on death would spurn the end he’d craved for so long and instead turn back from those waves to a world that no longer held anything for him?

“Hey! Ode.”

Ode was dreaming.

He knew it was a dream.

In the dream, he wore a sharply tailored suit and sat atop sun-scorched desert rock. The cost of looking so dapper was profuse sweating—he felt like he was stewing in a sauna, the stone baking his backside raw.

Yet it was a glorious day, the sun pouring down its fierce, radiant heat. Halfway through cleaning his pistol, he abruptly cast it aside and leaned back with a relish no sane man would share, propping his hands on the rock to soak in the blaze:

“Quiet, El. Let me savor the sensation of being alive a little longer.”

“’Sensation of being alive’?” A tall, burly shadow loomed close, slinging an elbow over his shoulder without a shred of decorum. El’s English carried a thick Egyptian accent. “You British guys just love to play the poseur.”

“Listen up, rookie—in field training, survival means you pass. But flunk the culture classes, and you’re done for. How much of this morning’s lesson stuck? Let me quiz you on the basics: Remember the theory of cosmic existence?”

The dream-Ode shoved the Egyptian’s elbow away with polite disdain: “Is it really that tough?”

“’The entire universe is woven from Azathoth’s dream.’”

“’It sleeps, the dream persists, the universe endures.’”

“’It wakes, the dream fractures, the universe crumbles.’”

“And the Three Pillar Gods?” The Egyptian crowded insistently closer.

Dream-Ode rose gracefully from the rock’s edge, brushing imaginary dust from his suit:

“The Black Goat of the Woods—Shub-Niggurath, which begets all life.”

“The Messenger of Chaos—Nyarlathotep, which ensures Azathoth remains lost in slumber, never stirring lightly.”

“The Unifier of All—Yog-Sothoth, sovereign over every fragment of time and space, knowing all.”

“You don’t think their names are a mouthful?” The Egyptian blithely ignored the rebuff, sidling nearer with a cheeky grin. Sweat beaded on his thick black brows and lively eyes under the relentless sun, radiating raw vitality. “Hey! Don’t call me an alarmist. Four god-names down—you’ve got ’em cold. But later on?”

“Nearly a thousand Great Old Ones, Independent Races, servants, even Elder Gods and their titles… your skull’ll burst trying to hold them all. And that’s before the daily grind of brutal PT.”

The Egyptian hooked an arm around his neck with easy camaraderie, drawing him in: “Get to know me, and you’ll see. I live for making deals.”

“Fancy one? I can slip you last year’s culture exam. Memorize those answers, and you’ll ace it hands-down. Payment…”

The Egyptian fixed him with shining black eyes, ablaze in the fierce sunlight. He flashed a roguish smile: “You Brits don’t mind gays, right? Truth be told, first day of basic, I clocked you in the crowd. That suit—damn, it was sharp!”

“Boom…”

Infernal flames laced with roiling black smoke devoured the sunlit vista in an instant.

Ode found himself kneeling on something yielding. Perched atop the pile was the Egyptian, who’d just been grinning shamelessly, pimping himself out.

The man’s lower half was gone, his pale spine trailing from ravaged flesh. Those once-vibrant eyes stared vacant now, his once-fever-hot hand cooling to a faint chill.

Yet El’s grasp on his hand was vise-tight, as if channeling every ounce of his remaining strength into that final clench: “I told you… didn’t I? What I love most… is striking deals.”

“I remember… I remember.” The words rasped broken from dream-Ode’s throat. “You said… recruit day, you spotted me in the crowd right off.”

El laughed, black blood bubbling from his mouth in thick gouts: “Oh… yeah… yeah… I remember… that Tom Ford suit… that waist—damn, so sharp!”

“…You got hurt… died for me. What do you want in trade?” Dream-Ode wrestled the tremor from his voice—though it emerged parched and strained all the same—stubbornly shirking the truth of his comrade’s doom.

“I want… I want you…” El’s pupils dilated, drifting apart, yet his grip only tightened: “I want you to win.”

“I want you to win, Ode. You have to!”

“Boom…”

Flames and dense black smoke consumed the scene at last.

In that same instant, Ode jolted awake to a cacophony of screams and wails. Cannon fire thundered; the world crumbled. He realized abruptly what cushioned his knees: human corpses.

The epiphany sent him scrambling upright, only for the treacherous, spongy ground to pitch him sprawling once more.

Harsh, chaotic howls surged from every direction, shrill as a lunatic’s death-rattle, as torment’s ultimate shriek:

“Wake up… you must wake!”

“No… no! You can’t. You’ve no right to sleep.”

“Open your eyes! Ode Douglas!!”

—No.

No.

Why?

He only wanted a proper rest.

This world had pushed him toward death with such zeal—yet now that he stood ready to embrace it, why did these piercing voices of agony bar his way? Why burden him with duties anew, oaths to uphold?

Hadn’t he done enough already?

What more must he achieve before he could surrender to sleep?

“Thud…”

In the faint glow at the bottom of the sea, the body that should have lain silent trembled violently and snapped open its eyes.

Was it a weary soul roused by echoes of the past—a desperate seeker of death?

No. It was a beast, furious at having its slumber disturbed, yanked back from hell into the mortal realm.

On the riverbed, Dagon finally stirred from its coma. Amid the crashing waves of agony, it recalled everything that had happened, unleashing a roar laced with shock and rage. It thrashed desperately across the seabed, twisting its massive form to face the human who had nearly killed it.

But the moment it turned, in the pitch-black seawater, it locked eyes with a pair of coldly gleaming green orbs.

Could he move? Ode’s gaze fixed unyieldingly on the colossal creature before him. He strained against his body, but nothing happened.

Could he bite? He parted his jaws, only to discover that his mandible had shattered in the previous death struggle.

At that instant, perhaps only the bones above his shoulders remained even somewhat intact. But did that mean he had to relinquish the prey right at his maw?

In the abyssal depths, an instinctive crisis gripped Dagon’s heart. Its rational mind clashed with this inexplicable urge to flee. Then, in the next breath, the puny human exhaled slowly—before inhaling with the force of a whale!

Five hundred cubic meters of seawater vanished into his gut in the blink of an eye, an endless torrent.

A vortex spun up with ferocious speed beneath the waves, hurricane-like, ripping mud and sand from the seabed, shattering corals, and dragging every nearby fish and shrimp toward its heart.

Dagon, sprawled on the bottom, was unprepared. The whirlpool hauled it nearly ten meters straight toward Ode.

By the time realization dawned, all thoughts of vengeance or eliminating threats had evaporated. In sheer terror, it flailed its foreclaws into the sediment, tail lashing wildly as it scrambled in the opposite direction. It battled the vortex for a full two or three minutes before wrenching free, fleeing headlong for its lair without a backward glance.

Ode ceased his gulping intake, obsession and frustration burning for the escaped quarry. He pressed his chin to the ground and crawled forward several meters before loosing an enraged growl.

When he whipped his head around, no remnant of civilized humanity lingered in those eyes ablaze with madness and primal ferocity.

That was when the unlucky intruder arrived.

It had planned to spill the beans in a frantic rush, then pat its butt and hightail it to safety. Its mouth opened: “Ode, Ou— Whoa!!”

Like a sand serpent erupting from long concealment on the seafloor, Ode lunged. He nearly bisected the Dream New God—no larger than the Tooth Fairy—and gulped it down whole.

But the billowing silt merely heralded the hunt’s resumption. A thrill-roused rumble vibrated from the green-eyed beast’s throat on the seabed. In the next instant, it struck again!

“What—no! No! Listen to me!!” For the first time, the Dream New God tasted true terror, its heart clenched in fear. “I’m here to help you!!”

“I mean—though I can’t do much, even Majesty Yahweh can only stalemate Yog-Sothoth just outside Dreamcatcher Town. But Majesty Yahweh sent me with a message!”

“Hey! Listen, you savage brute! I can’t linger here long! Yog-Sothoth’s focus won’t stay diverted by Majesty Yahweh forever! Take this key! It’ll teleport you to the Anglican Church in town. The clock there holds the power of time reversal. Turn it, and you’ll go back to the pa—”

Swish…

The seawater churned.

Ode stared without blinking at the Dream New God, launching toward it like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Yet as the Dream New God screamed, eyes squeezed shut against impending doom, it was merely battered aside by the current in Ode’s wake—like a pebble without weight or worth.

When it peeked again, Ode had an ancient scrap of parchment clamped in his jaws. He slithered across the bottom like a boneless serpent, his green eyes—unblinking for ages—probing the gloom for the next sufficiently mighty prey.

“…Is that… Khirra’s marriage contract?” The Dream New God shuddered, its mind gone blank, as it watched Ode methodically, expressionlessly gnaw the power-laden document.

Were Ode lucid, he might have spoken to the Dream New God—wary yet probing—explaining that Dagon had dropped the contract in its panicked flight.

Instead, he spared it one disinterested glance: it moved, but offered no sustenance. He turned away. Still chewing Khirra’s marriage contract, he dipped his head like a pliant snake toward his chest, nosing into his collar until he extracted that other paper—the one that had survived brutal combats without a drop of wetness—and crunched it alongside the first.

This aligned perfectly with the scheme he’d devised in his right mind. He’d hoarded that slip bearing Yog-Sothoth’s true name for exactly such a juncture.

Its original purpose mattered not; only the potency it wielded against The Colour Out of Space. In extremis, it was his ace.

Ode’s teeth shredded the resilient parchment. Dry fragments lodged in his throat, forced down with gulps of blood.

“You…” The Dream New God quivered so violently it seemed to blur into afterimages. “You devour anything! Do you even know what that was?! A contract to summon Yog-Sothoth! I’ve never seen its like… Deities like Yog-Sothoth never heed summons. How did you even have… Never mind. The point is, no living thing has ever ingested one. If there are repercussions—”

Its prattle cut off dead as it met Ode’s utterly inhuman green stare.

Gulp. Ode swallowed the final morsel without expression, then pushed himself upright on both hands.

Just as planned, the pair of contracts dissolved in his stomach at breakneck speed, transmuting into raw power that flooded his frame.

Every bone, every scrap of flesh sang with euphoric relief. Hideous wounds and mangled limbs mended before the eye.

…Yet deeper still. In his soul’s core.

Even with thought suspended, Ode sensed something taking form.

Forming into an entity that required no intellect to comprehend—knowledge innate upon birth:

A marriage contract.

But not with Dagon.

…

In the hushed seawater, Ode raised his head slowly, cocking it like a beast puzzled by some enigma.

Then he lashed out with one hand, fingers plunging viciously into his freshly knit abdomen!

“Aaahhh, Lord…” The Dream New God shrieked, dissolving into face-clasped sobs by the end.

Regret choked it for accepting this errand. It yearned to flee the deranged predator, yet duty bound it: “Stop! Stop!! No food remains here—you’ll kill yourself!!”

Ode paid it no heed. A beast that heeds a mosquito’s whine is no beast.

Head bowed, he hammered his belly with savage, irritable blows—as if it were not his flesh, but a loathsome parasite he would rend to pulp and excise from marrow and blood.

Blood-mist bloomed afresh in the water, billowing outward until—

Light poured from above the waves.

It heaved in boundless fury, coalescing and shattering like a billion supernovas birthed, then hurtling to inescapable death.

The seawater boiled under its radiance, birthing vast bubble clouds that pressure pulverized.

Dull, relentless rending—like cloth torn asunder—accompanied the onslaught. The white torrent gleamed with fractured brilliance, a galaxy of scintillating diamonds.

Enfolded within, it struck Ode down, pinning his gore-smeared hands to the seabed.

“Yog…” Half a name escaped the Dream New God before the erupting light-band hurled it away, flinging it beyond the town.

Next instant, a guttural snarl bubbled from Ode’s throat. His right arm flexed explosively, body vaulting aside and upward; fangs snapped at the unseen restraint on his wrist.

The glow amid ruptured bubbles scattered. When it countered, five bands lashed out, clamping neck and limb-joints alike.

Freedom curtailed, Ode’s fury redoubled. He emptied his lungs of air and inhaled once more upon the foe—

The seabed plunged into fresh turmoil.

No soul pierced the roiling murk to witness the fray, nor dared venture near the Land of Death.

Thrice they slammed like ordnance into a volcanic crater, felling its chimney-pillar in ponderous ruin.

On impact with the bottom, the quake split a chasm; pent magma spewed forth!

—

Had sanity graced Ode, he’d have spotted myriad inconsistencies.

Khirra’s marriage contract fused with Yog-Sothoth’s summoning rite shouldn’t elevate a lesser pact to archfiend tier.

Why would Yog-Sothoth thwart its own contractant’s suicide?

His strikes upon them missing made sense; theirs grazing him did not. The pattern—eerily familiar?

But beast-rage alone drove him now, instinct dictating every parry and lunge. Until the ensnaring radiance yanked him skyward, shattering the surface to dash him upon a jagged isle’s shore.

“Roar…” The chest-deep bellow finally voiced. Poised to savage a hunk from his adversary, the light crushed his nape—forcing his brow to crack against a derelict ship aground nearby.

“Hrrgh…” He bucked with undimmed savagery until damp locks parted before his eyes, unveiling a pale etching.

Crude work: one half in clumsy strokes, the other archaic curves.

The rough side bore a stickling clutching a watermelon; beneath, “Marr.”

The refined side, a burlier cookie-man; beneath, “Rui.”

Hand in hand, sweetly entwined—the watermelon cradling yet another name:

【Ode】

“…” Ode, caught in the midst of his struggles, froze for an instant.

Then he heard someone whisper softly in his ear: “Is this reason enough to bring you back to life?”