Funnily enough this omake was written mostly on my phone with minor editing on my computer. The computer keeps me too distracted to write anything.
Just a heads-up, this omake was a bit of an experiment so it might be a bit rough around the edges. Criticism is welcome, as always, and I hope you enjoy it.
-----//||\\-----
After I left the command room to begin searching for a clue as to the identity of the thing eclipsing the sun, I made sure to stop by the nearest shelters to gather as much of my personnel as I could find, so we could speed up the search.
Unfortunately, everyone was spread out in shelters all over the city. Thus, all the forces I had at my disposal were myself, Glass, and two soldiers who were guarding the research library to ensure no one would try to mess with it while everyone else was busy fighting. We also didn't have digitalized copies of the grimoires ready, so we were doing this the old fashioned way: speed reading the books and hoping we found the right thing.
"And that's the Ponape Scripture done. Nothing on big black blobs of blackness there either." My second-in-command said from where she sat across from me. "We'll be here forever at this rate." She whined, but reached for another book in the stack between us nonetheless.
"We don't have many clues here, Glass. We can't exactly cast Page-Bound Epiphany to find what we need. Not yet at least." I replied while I wrote a note on a red Post-it note and affixed it to the page I was reading so it'd be easier to find later. Red for names of creatures of interest, blue for places, green for legendary events or prophecies, black for rituals and spells. I would bet my liver we'd have to deal with Atlach-nacha at some point. "We know it drinks light and heat, it's blacker than the night sky, and it has no physical mass to speak of. And that's pretty distinctive, really. Just imagine if all we had to go with were some foul stench and waving tentacles."
"Shit, we'd have about four dozen candidates in just this one book!" One of the Privates I had roped into helping us chimed in beside me, and his fellow across from him grunted in agreement. The man was named Matthew Campbell, a man with a most impressive chin who seemed almost eager to dive into these books, while the other one was a woman going by the name of Annette d'Aubigny, who would probably look like a model were she wearing anything other than her ACU, and she seemed even more interested in her reading material than Campbell was, going by how carefully she was reading the copy of a 14th century Arabic bestiary in her hands.
"It's still damn annoying." Glass said. "How do we even have a copy of the De Vermis Misteriis, anyway?"
"They translated and reprinted a whole lot of Grimoires back in the 2012 End of The World craze." I replied. "And there was another rush for esoteric books back when the Kaiju showed up and people thought the Beast of Apocalypse was going to come out of the Abyss with the Whore of Babylon upon its back."
"Think that one will show up now?" Private Campbell asked.
"If it does I hope it'll be after we build those fucking huge cannons--"
"I found those fuckers!" The other Private shouted and thumped the book on the long desk. "Sammael, the Hound of Resurrection!"
Everyone stared at her, and she explained with a grin. "I was looking for any clues about the other two things coming at us, and I fucking found it. Them. Anyway, I got a lead."
Samael was a disgustingly common name for evil or adversarial entities, but the fact she found anything on one of the immediate threats was a big step forward. "Give me the details, Annette."
"The fucker's name is Sammael, two ems, and it multiplies whenever you kill it." She explained. That wasn't encouraging. "And it's supposed to be extremely dangerous, but only about eight feet tall."
"You sure you found the right one?" Campbell asked, and in response Annette showed us the page with a reproduction of an illumination featuring a beast that was very close to the one that had attacked Savannah some time before I arrived. "Okay, you found the right one. What else?"
"Apparently, if an angel were present when the fucker was killed it would weep in joy and seal away its soul, so it could not return." She explained. "And if you don't have an angel handy then blessed salt would do the trick."
"How much salt we're talking here, Anne?" Campbell asked.
"It says here 'enough to hide its visage and create a ward around the revenant'."
"Enough to cover the skull and make a circle around the corpse." I translated.
"That's a shitload of salt," Glass observed. "A few trucks at least. Savannah might spend the next few weeks dining low on sodium."
"What I think is the weirdest part is how the one in the bestiary was just a couple feet larger than a man, while we're dealing with a Kaiju-sized beast." I noted.
"Those things were supposed to be sealed away and asleep, right?" Campbell said. "So maybe the reason they're bigger now is that they're awake?"
"We also didn't have the Kaiju fucking up the walls between dimensions back in the fourteenth century," Glass added. "So that's another thing that might have helped it grow."
"...I think I got a theory to explain it now." Campbell said. "Maybe there's just more of Sammael here compared to the old days?"
I frowned, tried to understand what he was getting at, and the man continued. "So, they're awake and free to interfere now, right?" Everyone made vaguely agreeing noises. "But they're still not
here." He stressed the last word.
"So what, they're still outside this universe and the monsters here are just a part of them they managed to slip in?" Glass asked.
"Sorta, yeah." Campbell nodded. "They aren't all here, so they force a bit of themselves down to where we exist. It used to be they were sleeping and there was way more resistance, but now they have more strength and have an easier time forcing themselves through."
"...It's like the shadow of a sphere in a piece of paper." d'Aubigny said. "Something in a higher dimension projecting an approximation of itself into a lower dimensional space."
Okay, that was not the analogy I expected from an Army Private, but it seemed like the most scientific way to explain it. "We're passing on that info to Command so we can get the salt ready." I said. "And I'll be talking with General Harrington to have you two transferred here full time. You two are fucking hired. Anything else?"
The two Privates exchanged grins, but had nothing to add and so they and Glass went back to reading while I drafted a report. I was mid-way through explaining the Privates' theory when Glass called my attention.
"I think I got a lead," she said. "But the book is really fucking vague. It mentions a creature called 'The Nameless Mist', and it's the best match I found so far."
"Any relation to all the Mist that shows up along with the rest of those creatures?" I asked. "Because that'd be one hell of a coincidence."
"Not really, and the Mist Life Sciences department already found an explanation for the Mist..." I could almost hear the 'but'. "This thing's supposed to be Yog-Sothoth's progenitor."
Well then. Every person who had lived in Arkham had heard about Yog-Sothoth, of only because the Dunwich incident was one of the most famous stories in the region right alongside stories of witches and occult rituals in the halls of Miskatonic. People believed on those tales like the modern Irish believed in fairy circles, we'd ridicule the superstition and refuse to step inside one for love or money in the same breath.
"...The Mist Life Science department got the physical explanation. We have possible a metaphysical explanation now. They aren't mutually exclusive." I said. "Anything else?"
"It's way out of our league, Richard." Glass said seriously. "So much it ain't even funny. I don't think we have anything that can harm it unless we get lucky when opening a random page on the Necronomicon."
"So we're fucked." I said matter-of-factly.
Glass shook her head. "Actually, I think we don't even have to worry about it. I mean, it's just hovering menacingly, right?"
I nodded. It was, indeed, just drinking the light and hovering lazily above our heads, at least according to the last report I got.
"Then maybe it doesn't want to interfere. Maybe it just wants to watch." My second-in-command continued. "Isn't part of the reason the Great Old Ones woke up the fact they didn't get the entertainment they were due? That one has a pretty damn good seat to watch the battles."
I could see the logic behind that hypothesis. That it meant we wouldn't have to fight an Outer God made it all the more attractive. "So it just showed up for dinner and a show?"
"It was probably summoned here, actually." Glass said.
"Don't we have a bunch of cultists all over the battle zone?" Campbell chimed in. "They might have summoned one of their gods to see their triumph or something like that."
"It might be the Sammaels, too." d'Aubigny added. "They're described as servants of greater Evils, so they might have called one of their bosses to show off."
"That makes a lot of sense, actually." Glass said. "Think we should add that to the report?"
"Sure. Actually, could you finish it for me?" I asked Glass. "It's your theory, and I need to find the proper way to sanctify the salt to seal the Sammaels."
"Well, this book has no instructions on that front, sir." Annette said. "What other options do we have?"
That was the actual question now, wasn't it? None of the books I had read so far featured much in the way of sealing and banishing. Many prayers and honors to the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, quite a few fragments of summoning rituals, even the occasional tip on how to kill lesser entities, but almost nothing on how to get rid of the powerful ones. It was a worrying pattern, actually.
A thought crossed my mind, probably because the memories of the stories about the Dunwich incident were still fresh in my mind.
"...I'll get the Necronomicon."
Glass whistled. "Finally bringing out the big guns?"
"The big guns we can't fucking read, yeah." I said. "Hopefully I'll find and translate something before we're forced to kill four of those fuckers at the same time."
Minutes later I had taken the Al Azif out of the safe we kept it in and was wearing gloves while staring at the grand grimoire. Despite the tasks they still had to finish the others were crowding around me and staring at the book, and I couldn't blame them. The Al Azif had a sort of weight to it. A sort of gravity that drew your attention and demanded you give it the respect it was due.
Carefully and reverently, I lifted the volume and once again I couldn't help but notice the size and weight of the book. Hundreds of pages of vellum, bound in leather and covered with small, almost tiny Arabic script and assorted marginalia. I ran a finger down the cover before I opened it, and it froze mid-travel when I noticed one of the pages-- the immensely valuable and irreplaceable pages-- had been dog-eared.
More to the point, I had throughly examined this book before, to check how well-preserved it was (extremely, by the way. Eerily so) and none of the pages had so much as a crease. And yet here it was.
I opened that specific page, and the first thing that I saw was an illumination that took the top quarger of a page, of a bearded man pouring a white substance from a silver amphora, forming a circle of white grains.
"...
What the fuck?"
It took me a moment to realize it was I who said that, and I decided to repeat it for good measure. "What the everloving
fuck?"
"I guess that's the right page?"
"The fuck do you think, Matthew?"
"Richard?" Glass said, ignoring the two soldiers' bickering. "That's fucking creepy. You sure this book is safe?"
I paused for a moment, before finally answering. "No. No I'm not sure, but it's our best bet right now." I moved my hand to undo the dog ear on the page, only to notice the corner was straight and unmarked, as if it had never existed. I shook my head in disbelief. "We'll translate this very carefully. We have to trust this fucking book for now, but I'll be damned if I won't be careful."
I took a deep breath, and stated issuing orders.
"Private Campbell." I said, loudly and clearly. "Get me all the Arabic-English dictionaries over there," I pointed to an aisle near the entrance of the research library. To his credit the man stopped bickering with his fellow soldier and immediately moved to fulfill his orders. "Private d'Aubigny, I need stationery. Pencils, erasers, notebooks, fucking post-it notes. There should be enough in the offices outside."
d'Aubigny actually saluted before departing, leaving me alone with Glass for the moment.
I took a deep breath. "Glass, did you finish the report to the command room?"
She nodded. "Almost. Gotta add this latest bit of bullshit, and then I'll need your signature for ID."
I snorted. "Yours as good as mine as far as I'm concerned. Finish it up and have one of the Privates deliver it, I'll need you here to help me translate."
She nodded, and went back to writing. I examined the pages, their illuminations and marginalia, and for all the book was dangerous and potentially hazardous to one's sanity, I couldn't help but admite their beauty.
There were too many mysteries, too many oddities and strangeness nowadays, but hopefully I would be able to uncover it all in time. There's nothing that can't be found, no secrets that cannot be uncovered. Questions about whether or not I should were meaningless at this point, if we wanted to survive we would
need to. I just hoped I'd be able to keep my life and my sanity intact while I did so.
-----\\||//-----
).
