Some of the more fervent cultists stripped naked and screamed gibberish. Morons, she thought.
Greg stood on the other side of the throne. He was silent, relaxed. No need for the show now.
The earth rumbled as the tentacle god-beast drew closer and closer to the moon it had spent countless millennia pursuing. The hapless ordinary people who pursued their lives, blissfully ignorant of the strangeness of a much vaster universe, remained so. The coming joining was invisible, and would be until it was too late.
Fenris brushed the moon with the tip of his tentacle.
Calvin’s hand tingled. He peeled away the skin like a candy wrapper. It even made that crinkling noise.
The Chosen’s chant changed, transforming from nonsense into a string of syllables not made for human mouths. They swayed in unison, whispered in a language Calvin had forgotten long ago.
He remembered now.
He glanced at Sharon. He’d regret leaving her behind. The rest of the human race and the small sliver of reality they called home he’d be glad to cast off. He’d miss some things. Movies. Books. Apple pie. Doritos. The feel of a sandy beach between his toes. Toes.
Mostly, he’d miss Sharon.
His flesh fell off. He stood naked, an ebony god of pure intellect. Not his true form. He had no physical form. Even this was just a contrivance forced on him by a universe unable to accept what was happening.
Two crackling bolts lanced from his chest into the sky, connecting with the moon and Fenris. The mind, the body, and the power. Three aspects of a single entity that had been too long divided.
The estate broke free of its boundaries and spread like a green shadow across the face of the city. From there it would devour the world like an invading organism bent on rewriting itself on the fabric of the universe. Humanity would have screamed in collective terror if not for the fact that everyone within a thousand miles was transformed into piles of moss.
The cultists cast off their cloaks. The hairy, four-armed wolves howled and danced in reckless abandon as their god began his ascent. Except for the beast that had been Sharon. She stood before Calvin, lowered her head, and whimpered.
He felt the final spasm of the universe as Fenris wrapped his tentacles around the moon. And in a moment it would all be over.
“Goodbye, Sharon.”
The moment didn’t come.
Vom plowed into the moon god, knocking him away from his goal. Fenris shrieked as Calvin fell to Earth. False skin wrapped around him. Stifling, rotten, smothering flesh.
He vomited yellow slime onto the stone floor. Being crammed back into mortal flesh, even if only the illusion of such, was uncomfortable. It was like tight shoes he’d gotten used to wearing, and now that they were off he didn’t want them back on.
The cult reverted to halfway-human forms. Calvin used the shredded remains of a discarded robe to cover Sharon’s naked body.
Greg said, “What the hell?”
In the night sky Fenris clashed with only slightly less horrific entities for the future of the moon and the universe by proxy.
Pogo jumped from the bushes and landed before Calvin’s throne. The dog blackened and smoked as the alien magic of the estate sizzled against his flesh. Calvin recognized a fellow greater eldritch when he saw one.
The dog gasped painfully, turning on the cult and growling. Then he ran into the house, smashing his way through the front door, bounding up the stairs, and finding Diana on the bed.
Pogo lowered his head and cried out mournfully. The roof exploded. The unnatural fog that played havoc with Diana faded. She sat up, shook the cobwebs away. She ached and had a hell of a headache, but she could think again. She could move. As long as Pogo was close enough, casting his own strange aura over her, she was functional.
She forced herself to stand, trudged with heavy steps downstairs and to the alcove where the cult stood. They stood, shocked, at this unbeliever in their midst while their lord above clashed with the monstrous usurpers.
Diana cleared her dry throat.
“We need to talk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Fenris, the great tentacled horror, lashed out. A whip of his tendrils batted away Vom and obliterated a dozen Smorgaz clones.
Vom pounced. His countless mouths bit Fenris’s unstable flesh. Bright orange and blue bile sprayed from the wounds. Zap’s bolts blew searing chunks off the moon god. The cloud of Smorgaz spawn dogpiled, covering everything in a squirming mass of purple.
“What are you doing?” asked Greg, though speaking was difficult with the fangs jutting from his jaws. “You’re interfering!”
Diana ignored him and the confused, twisted halfabominations of the cultists around her.
“You can’t do this,” she said to Calvin. “It’s not right.”
“You don’t understand,” he replied.
“I understand. I do, but—”
“Shut up!” Greg growled. “You have no right to speak to him. Our lord only speaks to predator, not prey.”
“Put a sock in it, Greg. If he’s going to destroy my universe, then I think someone on the con side of the argument should get a say.”
The cultists encircled Diana. The flaps circling Pogo’s sucker mouth waggled as he growled. While he was a thing as unstoppable and inconceivable as Fenris, most of his power was spent keeping Diana moving. He wouldn’t be of use for much else.
“You really don’t want to do this,” she said. “You’re still civilized human beings under there somewhere. You have to be.”
A vicious grin crossed Greg’s face. “Kill her.”
“Ah, hell.”
The furious cultists leaped into action, burying Diana beneath a swarm of claws and teeth.
Greg half-laughed, half-bayed at the sight of it.
Calvin stared inscrutably at the savage pack. Its bloodthirsty shrieks rang in his ears.
Above, Fenris shrugged off his opponents. Smorgaz spawn streaked across the atmosphere like meteors of white fire. They struck the tip of South America, disintegrating Argentina. With freshly grown tentacles, Fenris tossed Vom aside into Zap.
The cultists grew hairier, more beastly. Sharon groaned as her body shifted in Calvin’s arms.
He didn’t do anything. Just watched as the battle played out. As Fenris closed in on the moon, the change in his physical body started again. Before it went very far, though, the cultbeasts started whimpering as Diana threw off her attackers with a flurry of punches and backhands. The claws and teeth of the cult proved unable to harm Diana, and they regenerated from even the most serious injuries to bounce back to actiothe fray. Meanwhile, Diana’s monsters weren’t capable of causing much lasting injury to Fenris, but they were able to push him away from the moon.
It went like this for several minutes. Sometimes the moon god would draw closer to his goal, and the cult would change into fearsome, four-armed beasts and overwhelm Diana. Then Fenris would be pushed back, and she’d start winning.
Calvin stayed with Sharon. Each of her transformations seemed more difficult, more painful than the last. And her body was losing cohesion. Her hair fell out. The outer layer of her skin liquefied, dripping into a grayish puddle at her feet.
A beast latched on to Diana’s arm with its jaws, and she yelped. She’d felt it. Her monsters, the source of her invulnerability, were losing to Fenris. She punched the cultist and threw him across the garden, even as more advanced on her.
“What the hell am I doing?”
While her powers were almost unlimited right now, she was still too mortal to use them effectively, too bound by cause and effect. But she was tapped into Unending Smorgaz, and there was no reason to fight this horde alone.