She saw its summoning in her mind. There was Elder Seth cutting himself open, surrounded by the bleeding dead. And there was the Jibbenainosay billowing inside a cathedral, squirming into the universe, the foul-smelling shit of some other reality.
Also, she knew that inside her was something that recognized the Dark One, that knew its secret names and the nature of its multiple existence. Something which, in another life, could even claim kinship with the Jibbenainosay. This was ihe thing that had helped her best Dr Proctor, had hauled her up to the Sixth Level, had made her Krokodil.
Whatever it was that possessed her, she hoped it would have the resources to fight this world-gobbling thing.
A tentacle shot out of the sand, and she brushed it aside. Its sweat stung.
She swung down from the perch, and dived into the sand. She expected to be engulfed, but her bubble travelled with her. Standing in front of the door to the chapel, she braced herself. The chapel must be the last of Santa de Nogueira. There were excavations in the earth where the storm had uprooted and scattered the monastery's subterranean cellars and passageways.
The bubble expanded, and she saw the ruin that was left where the courtyard had been. The flagstones were gone, and even the sand stripped away. The surface was uneven, strewn with detritus. A dome of sand-thick air curved over the area. Krokodil looked up, and saw the bodies sinking through the storm to the fragile bubble.
Several sets of legs dangled into the bubble, and were followed by man-shaped things. They were puppet-strung on tentacles, and twitched like galvanized frogs' legs.
Twelve corpses, dressed in bloodied black, touched down, and bobbed on their tentacles. They were all broken in various ways, but they were sprouting new organs from their rotten flesh. They were poison fungi, Krokodil knew, the stings of the Jibbenainosay.
The Dead Dozen stood in ranks, unsteady but mainly upright. Most of them didn't have faces any more, but those she could see were ordinary. They were dressed in the remains of outfits like the one she always saw Nguyen Seth wearing. One zombie, hunched over because of the tentacle stuck through his spine, even still retained his wide-brimmed pilgrim hat. These people had been Josephites, like Seth's fools from Spanish Fork. She knew more had been sacrificed for the benefit of the Elder's Great Mission.
She looked up at the boiling sand roof of the bubble. The face was there again, between the dangling tentacles.
"Freak you," she said, opening her optic. Her patch burned away, and the lase struck upwards, striking Seth's laughing face dead centre. It was broken apart, and a shower of sand fell into the bubble, dusting the zombies with muddy dandruff. Krokodil wiped her face off.
The nearest of the Dead Dozen made a grab for her, a bloated scorpion tail uncurling from its mouth. She twisted its neck with both hands, and the body fell lifeless. The disembodied head and its poison appendage still whipped around on its tentacle. The eyes popped on stalks. With an optic blast, she singed it to a skullcinder, and the tentacle was withdrawn in a whipping movement.
She unslung the machine pistol from its shoulder harness, and drew it out from beneath her padded jacket. It was old-fashioned and she doubted whether it would be much use against a Dark One, but there was still a Jazzbeaux part of her that took comfort in 20th-century deathware.
She gave the zombies a burst at chest height, and fleshflowers burst open where her slugs struck home. One or two were damaged beyond repair, and just hung useless, but the rest were still mobile enough to come for her. Her next spray was at head-height, and she gave a few lase jabs with her optic as well.
About half of the Dozen were out of commission. The rest were not recognizable even as former human beings. One scuttled towards her on its hands and the myriad crablegs that sprouted from its hips. Its Josephite hat bobbed as its head receded into the chest cavity. She emptied her clip into it, and it leaped like a Mexican jumping bean, green fluid splashing in spirals. It kept moving until she brought her booted foot down on its spine and pinned it to the ground. She swept with her lase, and severed the tentacle. The Josephite convulsed, and went limp, cockroaches bursting from its split mouths.
The remaining five corpses fell back into a close formation. She slipped a new clip into the pistol, and spattered them with fire. They still stood, linking arms, their tentacle strings twining together like the strands of a rope. They were growing together, forming a composite creature. Arms and legs reached out to steady the roughly spherical, multiply-headed beast. Its umbilical tentacle was thick and rough-skinned, like an elephant's trunk. Skins burst, and organic weapons poked through: stings, claws, mouths. A stiff tube spat pips at her. The tiny things exploded in the air, puffing sick-smelling smoke.
She held her breath and got out of the way. She put another burst of fire into the thing, and it swallowed the bullets with pleasure. Her lase blasts made smoking pinholes, but did no damage.
There were still human heads in the morass, and they were whispering to her.
The thing stumped towards her, agitated, and she danced back towards the chapel. She was always at the centre of the bubble, she noticed. She could not run into the storm and take her chances there.
The thing knew which way she would go, and kept pace with her. The Jibbenainosay was playing around, she realized. It could snip her head off with a single stroke, but it was prolonging the game.
A tightness was growing in her chest. Without knowing why, she opened her mouth and began to suck in air. Her lungs filled, but still she sucked. She inflated a little, but was able to take it. With the wind, she tasted power.
The thing stopped, and stood ten yards away from her, its appendages waving in the draught.
She sucked in more.
Stones came away from the chapel wall, a hundred feet away, and flew through the air.
Her inbreath continued.
She was Krokodil. The Ancient Adversary. She lived only to bring down the Dark Ones.
The thing was shaking now, pulled out of shape by the wind. Its tentacle was tangled, and the strands were parting.
Through her mouth and her nostrils, through the apertures of her eyesockets, through the pores of her skin, Krokodil drew in air…
The thing was struggling with itself. One of its components tore free and, manlike, made a dash for the edge of the Bubble. A pincer struck out, and sheared it in half.
Krokodil paused, and held the breath. There was a terrible quiet.
Then, she exhaled.
X
In the Tabernacle, Nguyen Seth was preaching. He eulogized the sacrifice of the Inner Circle, and vowed to his congregation that their deaths would not be in vain, that their bodies would be foundation stones for the greatness of Deseret. Choirs sang as he spoke, filling the vast space with heavenly music. He was eloquent. His words flew like birds.
Roger Duroc sat near the back, exhausted, not hearing the Elder's speech. His world had been transformed completely by the manifestation of the Jibbenainosay. He was sobered. Now, for the first time, he fully appreciated the vastness of the work upon which he was engaged. Nothing else mattered. Literally, nothing else in the entire history of the universe had ever mattered. His own life was less than nothing, and he was one of the handful of human beings who had anything at all to contribute to the Purpose.
Seth was enthusing the congregation. Tomorrow, when Krokodil was dead, he would select a new Inner Circle, and the process of initiation would begin. Duroc was impressed by the Elder's attention to petty details. A lesser immortal would have sunk to his knees in the presence of the Dark One and let everything else disappear from his mind, but Seth knew how important it was to retain his grip on the minutiae of the Great Work.