Underland - Chapter 31: Unfamiliar

He dreamed of rats that night.

They crawled in a grotesque pit dug in black oily stone, squeaking and gnawing on the flesh of the innocent. Hundreds of sharp teeth sank into the bones of unbelievers, breaking it down to feast on the marrow. Their bloodshot red eyes saw movement in the darkness, their claws unable to let them climb the smooth walls of the pit outside.

A bat-like monster enjoyed a feast of its own at the pit’s edge, drinking the blood of a human maiden it had caught by surprise. Its fangs had torn apart her neck and shattered her skull, but it wouldn’t let a single drop escape its ravenous thirst. Once the beast had reduced its prey to a dry husk of skin, it tossed it in the pit and let the rats feed on the leftovers.

The underground temple was as large as a cathedral. Once it had been the chest and innards of a giant creature whose bones and flesh had turned to stone. Rib-like pillars held the ceiling in place as cultists prayed before a central black monolith covered in eyes and grasping maws.

His altar.

His eyes observed his congregation. Fifty of them were in attendance, but he heard many more praise his name. Most were humans, but not all; lycans walked among them, whether they bore the rat plague or the wolf one. Their minds were fragile, wavering between the meandering illusion of humanity and the animal instinct. Even a few dark elves were in attendance, while a wererat apostle led the sermon.

Lepers desperate for release. Dregs of society, left to rot in the gutters with no one to care for them. Jaded aristocrats searching for forbidden pleasures only a god could offer. Old men wishing for new youth, and young girls asking for love. When they wore their red robes and pallid masks, they all looked the same.

No matter where they came from, they were of but one flesh.

They had heard his call, and listened.

“Ialdabaoth!” They chanted. “Our progenitor, Ialdabaoth! Father of All!”

They prayed for many things. For power, for love, for pleasure. For release from the pain, the illnesses, and the ravages of age. For immortality and eternal youth. For rapture.

For more.

As his apostle’s plague spread among the downtrodden and his handmaiden’s dreams tempted the minds of the elites, more asked to join the brotherhood. Followers of false idols abandoned their faith to turn to the true god. His power grew with each new piece of rebellious flesh returning to his embrace.

His mother watched the proceeding from a dark dais. She was younger and more beautiful than ever, her white skin unblemished, her raven hair as lustrous as the deepest darkness. Her eyes had turned bloody red, gazing down on the congregation with the cold curiosity of an alien, soulless thing. All the worshipers desired her fiercely, but none dared to approach her. She existed as an object of desire, a forbidden fruit: tempting, but forever beyond reach.

The time to feed was at hand.

“Who shall offer his life to the Master of Masters?” the rat apostle asked. “Who shall prove their faith?”

Many whispered, but none obeyed the command. They were new. Tempted, but not loyal yet. The chosen had taught them fear and desire, but not faith.

At last, a man stepped forward, revealing the fur and the tumors beneath his red hood, the animal’s face beneath his mask. He had lost his teeth and his skin had been wrinkled by time, homelessness, and alcohol. Mankind had cast him out long before the apostle’s plague took root in him, and his life had been forfeited to lung disease.

“Take me,” the man rasped, his hands trembling. “Save me. Please…”

“Do you submit to the knife?” The rat apostle asked, revealing a sacrificial athame hidden beneath his robes. “Only the faithful will be rewarded.”

But the man submitted all the same. His faith was born out of despair and loneliness; this man had nothing left to lose but his life. The mutant knelt before the altar, and let the apostle do his work.

The faithful’s screams filled the temple, as the knife peeled the skin off the sacrifice’s flesh.

Other cultists trembled and recoiled at the temple, though his mother continued to watch with unblinking eyes. Fear filled their weak hearts and some glanced at the bat beast; only fear of retaliation prevented them from running away. Others watched on with curiosity and fascination.

Skins were prisons. They split individuals from the whole, denying him the brotherhood of the united flesh. The skin let minds build barriers from the darkness of his dreams and allowed the soul to lie to itself. It allowed the rebellious flesh to imagine a future away from him.

At long last, when the sacrifice had shed his skin like its clothes, the altar deemed him worthy. One of its mouths opened wide, a black tongue slithering between sharp fangs. The flayed sacrifice offered no resistance as the organ coiled around his waist and pulled him down the maw’s gullet. The altar swallowed him whole while the rat apostle took the skin for future use.

He felt the sacrifice inside him, gnawed and chewed by his altar. The man’s flesh joined with his own, returning from which it came. And as this willing soul embraced his authority, his magic started to reshape him. His soul surrendered its shell of ‘humanity’ and welcomed the eldritch kinship.

After a minute of gnawing and chewing, the altar spat out the reborn sacrifice.

Gone was the twisted, sickly mutant that came in. A naked man stood before the altar, tall, strong, healthy, and vigorous. His muscles were stronger than steel, his skin a smooth and perfect disguise. His body radiated power and sexual magnetism. His hands could shatter stone and no weapon could claim his life.

The cultists watched on, their fear replaced with veneration, lust, and desire. Before them stood the pinnacle of mankind, the ideal man. The sacrifice had walked into the altar a piece of worthless lead and walked out made of priceless gold.

“Worthy!” the rat apostle shouted in ecstatic delight, his words echoed by the congregation. “Worthy!”

His mother was pleased as she watched. The flock’s fears were gone, replaced with hope and ambition. Their faith had been strengthened. All of them would lie, and steal, and kill to join the worthy. For the promise of power and immortality. And in due time, all would forswear their souls and flesh.

They were themselves, but they were also him.

They were masks for him to wear, husks through which his will manifested.

A god with a thousand faces and a million limbs.

“You will never grow old,” his mother said as she descended from the dais to congratulate the faithful. The cultists all fell silent to hear her prophetic words. “You will be young forever. Your seed will take root in any soil, and no woman will resist you. Death will never claim your soul, so long as your faith remains true.”

“Thank you,” the sacrifice said as he touched his perfect skin with his fingers. “This feels… better than anything.”

His mother smiled. It looked perfect and genuine, but it was anything but. In truth, she looked down on these creatures so easily led astray. They entertained her, like sheep greeting their master before walking into the slaughterhouse.

She was a higher being, a handmaiden of the Nahemoths, and among the greatest of the Qlippoths. Her god had willed her into existence for a mission, and she would fulfill it. No matter how many lives she had to take.

She glanced at her flock of sacrificial lambs. “All of you can become the best version of yourselves through the will of Ialdabaoth,” his mother said. “All of you can be reborn, if you swear loyalty to the Red Grail and the Holy Blood who are one!”

“I swear!” an old man said while raising his hand, eager to escape the icy breath of death.

“I swear!” a nobleman joined in, lusting for the forbidden knowledge and power no money could buy.

“I swear!” a lovestruck woman declared, desiring the beauty that would catch her crush’s eyes.

All swore one after the other, to his mother’s pleasure.

“Go forth and spread the word!” she commanded them. “Shepherd the faithful into our flock and subjugate the unbelievers! Cast down the false idols of the Dark Lords and their thralls! Exterminate the gray dwarves who would deny our father’s will! Only by proving your faith shall you join the worthy and the Promised Land!”

Her electric words filled her flock’s hearts as she waved her hand. Space bent around the cultists, letting them slip from the temple and back into the world outside. “Go kill in his name,” his mother ordered the sacrifice. “Stalk the night and teach them fear. Show them that as long as they hold the prince away from us, their subjects will pay the price. Let our enemies howl in despair, for we have returned.”

“As you wish,” the sacrifice said with a smile, his teeth pointed like a great beast’s fangs. The former human relished the task; society had rejected him, and now he had the power to strike back. Vengeance always tasted better when sweetened with blood.

His mother teleported the sacrifice away, remaining alone in the temple with the rat apostle. Her pet bat came to her, submitting to her will.

“Their faith is weak,” the rat apostle rasped with contempt, his athame still covered in blood. “Good Shelley doesn’t trust them. They do not understand yet.”

“They will serve all the same,” his mother replied while scratching her vampire pet’s head. “But I agree that you alone were faithful without expecting anything in return. As a reward for your devotion, I shall grant your wish.”

Good Shelley licked his lips. “How many more skins?”

“Twenty more at least, with the right age and sex. Women will help sew it, but they cannot contain the male essence. Once it is done, I shall guide it back from the beyond… and the mortals shall know fear.”

“Good Shelley has awaited this day for years, Milady,” the rat apostle rasped. “It shall be done. The good Shelley lives to serve.”

“I know.” His mother smiled and looked at the altar. “See how devoted he is, my prince? All that we do in your name?”

His countless eyes blinked.

“I know you are watching,” the thing disguising itself as his mother said with soft lips. “I cannot stop you. This world is your birthright.”

“He is watching us?” Shelley cackled in delight and knelt. “Good Shelley begs for forgiveness, my lord! He thought you were dead, dead like Crétail!”

Crétail?

“Come to me,” the woman whispered, as softly as a lover. “I am here. I was made for you, to guide you, to serve you. To lead you to your glorious destiny. I am your handmaiden, your slave. Come to me. I will show you true pleasure.”

He felt her words echoing in his mind like twisted temptation. The sensation filled him with a mix of horrid lust and horrible revulsion. How did this thing dare to use his mother’s face and offer him such a thing?

“The Dark Lords are deceiving you, my prince,” the creature whispered, her red eyes haunting as they peered into his own. “They will use you for their own selfish gain and then they shall discard you. Don’t you want to know who is at the well’s bottom? He is in great pain, my prince.”

He closed his eyes, and Valdemar woke up gasping for air.

“Valdemar?” Marianne asked from the bed below his own. “Valdemar, what is going on?”

The summoner didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his eyes fixated on the painted ceiling above his head. Once it showed pictures of moths and the Silent King’s realm. Now the surface had changed, representing the twisted temple of the flesh and its terrible congregation.

His mother stood at the center of it all, looking back at him.

“They are rebuilding their cult?” Lord Bethor asked, his eyes peering through his armor’s helmet.

Valdemar nodded as he finished drawing the summoning circle on the ground with his own blood. It was his most complex one yet, combining hexagrams, alchemical symbols, ancient runes, and multiple other symbols forming elaborate patterns. If anything, Valdemar was thankful for the ritual. He needed something to take his mind off the dream.

Due to the risks involved with summoning familiars, Lord Bethor had elected to run the ritual in an isolated chamber in his tower’s bowels… though Valdemar wouldn’t go as far as to call it a room. It was a cube of steel with only one door for exit.

This man allows himself no pleasure, the summoner thought as he observed Valar Bethor. He had yet to see any kind of decoration in the tower that didn’t serve a functional purpose.

Marianne kept her arms crossed, her back against a wall. She had barely spoken since she had noticed the transformed Bertrand among the painted congregation.

“What I don’t get is why I dreamed at all,” Valdemar said as he finished the circle. He thought his Painted Field would prevent it. “It was even worse than the well.”

“The Painted Field works as an artificial dreamscape,” Valar Bethor pointed out. “A dreamscape protects you from intrusions from the Primordial Dream and the Outer Darkness. However, I suspect that by mentally closing yourself to these two realms, your power sought release through another medium.”

“The Blood,” Valdemar guessed as he looked at his own hand.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape his bloodline.

“Yes,” Lord Bethor said. “We have no reason to trust the Lilith’s words, but if she is speaking the truth, then she cannot prevent you from observing them. This could prove invaluable to gathering information on their activities.”

“A Lilith?” Marianne asked with a frown. “I read about them in the Bestiary.”

“They’re the handmaidens of the Nahemoths and the second strongest Qlippoths,” Valdemar explained while clenching his fists in rage. “They embody lust, especially the perverse and the taboo kinds; but unlike other Qlippoths they don’t have a stable form. Instead, they possess living vessels, devour the soul until only a husk remains, and then spread madness and destruction.”

Marianne took the information and quickly put the two and two together, biting her lips. “The lab,” she whispered. “That cloud thing that emerged from the black wound and attacked me…”

“She was trying to possess you.” Valdemar gritted his teeth in rage. “And when she failed, the Lilith settled on an easier vessel.”

That disgusting creature had jumped into one of his mother’s clones, despoiling her flesh and taking it as a host. She had then teleported to Astaphanos to haunt him, only to retreat and avoid exposing herself. She must have contacted Shelley afterward, masterminding the wererat plague and turning her attention to recruiting new cultists. With her powers, it would have been child’s play to find vulnerable, ambitious people and entice them with promises.

Though the thought of attacking his mother’s image filled him with revulsion, Valdemar knew what he had to do when they crossed paths. He couldn’t let that foul monster make a mockery of his genitor.

And the vile way she had tried to tempt him… the thought still left a disgusting taste in his mouth. I’ll kill her, Valdemar promised with a heart full of anger. I’ll add her to the cohort of the dead.

Dead like Crétail.

Shelley’s words still haunted Valdemar, alongside what the Lilith had said.He is suffering? The summoner thought. Nahemoths don’t have a gender. It makes no sense.

Had the cultists been trying to confuse him and tempt him with knowledge? Or maybe Marianne’s gut was correct, and this ‘Crétail’ word mattered more than it seemed.

“I still don’t get how they can teleport,” Valdemar admitted. “Liliths have multiple abilities, but bending space isn’t one of them.”

“I think I can guess how,” Marianne said softly, catching Valdemar’s gaze. “It’s the same way Lord Och moves around. He soaked his fortress with his blood and teleports by using it as an anchor. Since Ialdabaoth’s body covers all of Underland and his messenger leads the cult—”

“They can access any tunnel that we Dark Lords didn’t ward with powerful magic,” Valar Bethor finished. “Clever.”

Valdemar frowned. “You do not sound surprised, Lord Bethor.”

“This was one of the theories I entertained when plague cases started appearing in areas under my purview without triggering the Earthmouths’ alarms.” The Dark Lord immediately thought about a war plan. “We need to destroy this Lilith. Once the rat and his mistress are gone, the rest will follow. They are lost weaklings led astray by empty promises, damned souls that won’t do anything without a strong master to whip them into action.”

“Do you think you could locate their temple?” Marianne asked Valdemar, though she was clearly unsure of herself. “I… this would be risky, but…”

“But it might be the only way to find Bertrand,” Valdemar finished her sentence, causing Marianne to look away. “It’s alright. I promised I would help.”

“I shall be present next time you sleep,” Lord Bethor declared. “By combining our powers, we shall coax out the Blood’s secrets. After you summon your familiar.”

Valdemar couldn’t help but chuckle. This man was relentless.

Marianne protested though. “Lord Bethor, shouldn’t we focus on the dream connection instead? If they can look back into him the same way he can observe them…”

“They cannot,” Lord Bethor replied dryly. “Or else they would have already contacted their ‘prince’ long ago. A wise slave does not see the world through their master’s eyes.”

Marianne didn’t look convinced, but knew better than to argue with the Dark Lord further.

Focusing on the task at hand, Valdemar touched the circle with his bloody hands and chanted the words of power. “Oh, planes of power,” he recited the formulas. “I beseech you, listen to my call!”

As the circle brightened and the Blood called to the planes beyond Underland, Valdemar remembered his discussion with Valar Bethor about familiars.

A familiar is a living conduit between its summoner and the planes, the Dark Lord had explained him. By binding yourself to one, you will bypass the need of a summoning circle. However, familiars are attuned to specific dimensions and entities. Some will even refuse to summon creatures whose nature they abhor.

Do you have one, Lord Bethor? Valdemar had asked, having seen him summon a Gnawer without a circle.

Yes… but pray you never meet it.

“I call thee, my other half!” Valdemar shouted as space started to bend inside the circle. “Cross the veil and join me! I offer thee my blood if you would share my life until all is dust!”

“What is he calling?” Marianne asked, slightly anxious as crimson lightning erupted from the circle and illuminated the room. “An animal? A demon? An elemental?”

“This ritual calls the creature best suited for the summoner’s nature,” Lord Bethor replied. “Fools try to use catalysts to call a specific familiar, but true mages should only rely on their own power.”

“What if he summons a Qlippoth or something hostile to humans?”

Valdemar had asked himself the same question. Besides the difficulty in summoning one, the reason why familiars were uncommon was that they weren’t under the caster’s control. Sometimes they even actively resisted the bonding process, with many summoners having perished at the fangs and claws of their ‘partners.’

“I will kill it,” the Dark Lord replied dismissively, “and he shall try again. It will tear out a part of his soul each time, but eventually he will summon a good match.”

Even so, from what Valdemar had understood, summoning the familiar was only half the work. Afterward, the sorcerer would have to attune his soul to it and strengthen the bond between them. A process that could take days, months, or years.

Thankfully, the summoning spell wouldn’t take so long.

I’m sensing it, Valdemar thought as he looked into the circle. The veil between the planes grew thinner, images crossing through the boundaries between universes. Pictures of endless waters beneath dark skies formed in his mind, alongside the twisted geometries of abyssal cities. A dark ocean…

Something swam in the waters on the other side, sensing his call and answering it. A telepathic presence contacted Valdemar’s mind, cold and alien. The summoner felt invisible, squamous tentacles brush against his brain as they tried to figure out how it worked. Whatever the creature’s nature, it had clearly never encountered humans before.

Valdemar didn’t detect any hostility in the mental contact; only childish curiosity and playfulness. I’m here, he thought as space rippled inside the circle. Just a tiny bit closer and I will show you a whole new world.

His familiar happily accepted and broke past the veil.

Space shattered for a brief second, and a creature the size of a human baby stumbled through. It disrupted the summoning circle as it rolled on the ground, the magic in the air dissipating in a bright flash of red light.

Valdemar locked eyes with his familiar’s. All six of them.

Is this my other half? Valdemar thought as the creature looked up at him with curiosity. He had never seen such a strange chimera. The alien entity was vaguely humanoid, but with blue-green skin and the head of a squid. Its tentacles moved around independently as they touched the steel ground, while two batlike purple wings flapped in its back. The creature had two large black eyes around the same place as humans, and four more on the sides of its head. It was clearly a baby of some sort, with short, underdeveloped limbs and four webbed fingers.

It was…

It was quite cute.

“Lord Bethor?” Marianne asked with a chuckle. She clearly found the familiar as strangely adorable as Valdemar himself. “What kind of creature is this?”

But the Dark Lord squinted behind his helmet, his tone wary. “I do not know.”

Neither did Valdemar. The creature didn’t resemble any Qlippoth or outsider that the summoner was aware of. Perhaps it came from the elemental plane of water? Or a dimension close to it?

The Dark Lord’s cold response instantly put Marianne on her guard, but Valdemar simply looked at his familiar with curiosity. The beast tried to stand on its tiny legs before touching its summoner with its tentacles. They were cold and salty to the touch, but they wriggled in happiness when Valdemar scratched the creature on the cheeks. Pretty friendly for an alien entity, the summoner thought with amusement.

“Ct…” The creature started to make noise with its strange voice. He sounded like a human speaking underwater. “Hu… lhu…”

“You can talk?” Valdemar asked with a frown, ignoring the wary gazes Lord Bethor and Marianne sent him. “What’s your name?”

Whether because it had learned the human tongue through their brief mental contact or something else, the creature seemed to understand his words and gave an answer.

“Ktulul!” The creature said with its tiny hands. “Ktulhu! Tulu!”

Was that its name? Ktulu? Though it might be wearing a disguise of some kind or grow into an abomination, Valdemar found it hard to keep his guard up in the familiar’s presence. It radiated that aura humans felt in the presence of babies and that inspired protective urges.

If the creature was a reflection of himself, then Valdemar had to hope it was good inside. For both of their sake.

“Ktulu,” the summoner said as he grabbed his familiar and cradled him like a child. The creature was no heavier than a cat, and just as affectionate. “I will call you Ktulu.”

Valdemar wondered how it would look once all grown-up though.