THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

 

Things go from bad to Nightmare for the Spartan 300

THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

“Mortal Man, do you know what weof the Gateless Realm call this planet? The Garden of Forking Paths.”

- Darael

 

Taylor, the eternal questioner,had a good one. “How the hell are we supposed to kill that?”

Evans snapped, “Maybe you canpester it to death with questions? Jeez, how is even the Major supposed toknow?”

Darael looked astonished at us aswe watched with revulsion and awe the many tentacled monstrosity that looked asif a mountain had mated with a squid.

“Why aren’t you all driven mad bythe very sight of this Great Old One?”

Rachel rasped, “We met an Old Onein that damn Tunnel. It attacked our minds. We survived.”

“Ah,” Darael muttered. 

“It actedas an antigen to your mind, which imitated the mind-infection and primed the mind’simmune system to defend your sanity.”

Rachel flicked angry eyes to me.“Did you understand any of that bollocks?”

“Yes, and you did, too. You justhate to be talked down to.”

“God!” gasped Porkins. “I thinkI’m going to puke!”

Reese said, “It’s towering in themiddle of a lake that wasn’t even there a minute ago.”

Helen, back in her fatigues,said, “Cthulhu is a sea entity and can create sea water out of whole cloth.”

Link gagged. “It is disgustinglooking.”

Darael sighed, “You are lucky.”

“Lucky?” laughed Doc Tennyson.“How do you come up with that?”

 “Cthulhu is not the most powerful of the GreatOld Ones. There are worse like the Outer Gods: Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, andAzathoth.”

Rachel, more to keep her image asunflappable than anything else, said with an obviously dry mouth. “I dare youto say those names three times quickly.”

My chest tightened. “Where’sPatton?”

Sister Ameal snorted, 

“Now, youthink of him? Since his mind was not ‘vaccinated’ as all of yours are, Ithanked him for his service and sent him to his cot … where hopefully he will awaken,thinking of all this as some bizarre nightmare.”

“Thanked him for his service?” Ifrowned.

“Yet again I was feelingnostalgic for the future.”

Mercer had found enough voice torasp, “Why is it just standing there looking at us?”

Cloverfield said, “Maybewondering why we aren’t stark raving, drooling maniacs?”

Tennyson muttered, 

“No. You willnote that it is not standing stock still but writhing in all of its limbs. I’veseen patients in terrible pain before. I do believe that horrendous giant is inunspeakable agony.”

Darael beamed a beatific smile.“Brilliant diagnosis for a defrocked physician.”

Tennyson snapped, “Not defrocked.Merely without a state license … for no good reason.”

I doubted that his chased-afternurse felt the same way or the attractive wife of that influential statesenator … with no sense of humor at all but with a great deal of jealous rage.

But I had a more pressingquestion to answer.

Like how could I keep this ElderGod from smearing my men and I all over the French landscape?

As with those businessmen whenthe Stock Market crashed. They did not lose everything when the market crashed.They lost everything when they jumped.

As long as there was life therewas a chance to turn things around.

For the life of me, I did not knowwhere to turn or how.

‘Elohim!’ I criedmentally.

‘Oh, so now, you think to cry outto me?’

‘Before it was only my life onthe line. Now, others who trust me to be smart will die.’

‘Sorry. No Deux ex machina. This isnot some badly written work of fiction. I gave you a brain. Use it, or do not.’

There was a sense of a shuttingof a door. Not exactly slamming, mind you. But a very firm closing of one.

Helen became flames again, and her fiery face stunned,gasped, “He – He ….”

“Gave me a brain. Gave me you. Gaveme Sister Ameal … such as she is.”

She spun to me, and I smiled, “Justchecking to see if you are paying attention.”

“I have attended enough to know thatsoon we will die a very horrid death.”

“But not right now.”

I looked at Darael.

“He’s suffering from the Bends,isn’t he?”

“Indeed. The Adversary awakened from its non-Euclidean geometry-etchedmonolith in the sunken city of R'lyeh.”

He shook his lion’s mane of ahead.

“So deep was it sunken in antediluviantimes that yonder Tiger tank would be twisted into tinfoil pretzels if submergedthat low.”

Darael snorted,

“It is no accident that R'lyeh islocated at the Pacific oceanic pole of inaccessibility (48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W),

 thepoint in the ocean farthest from any land – so that no unfortunate mortal wouldunintentionally disturb this abomination’s slumber.”

Helen frowned,

“It should already be dead thenfrom the bends. What use to bring a mortally wounded horror to face us?”

Darael raised an abnormally longforefinger.

“Ah, you trip over the obviouswith the word ‘face,' fledgling. The very sight of Cthulhu was meant to drive usmad not kill us.”

Evans heaved his Stinger with itspayload of a thermite missile atop his shoulder. “Well, I can put it out of itsmisery real quick!”

“No!” shouted Darael. “Mortalweapons have no effect at all on Cthulhu!”

The dying sunlight revealed the roaringmissile glancing off Cthulhu’s reptilian chest like a badly thrown knife againsta tree trunk.

Darael snapped,

“What part of ‘NO” did you notunderstand? It is a perfectly simple, short, one syllable, two letter word!”

Evans shrugged. “It was worth ashot.”

“No, moron. It was worth ourlives. Cthulhu brought its subjects with It!”

The Stinger missile slammed intothe silvery waters. There was a muffled explosion. Immediately, the silver diedin the waters to be replaced with eddies of scarlet currents.

The lake began to boil and bubblelike the cauldron of Macbeth’s witches.

But I wagered no eye of newt ortoe of frog would spring from those dark waters.

Taylor groaned, “Oh, man, we’re infor it now! Major, what do we do?”

“Circle the wagons!” I calledout.

Master Sergeant Theo Savalasgroaned along with Taylor, but for a different reason.

“Rick, when are you ever going touse correct military …. Oh, to hell with it! CIRCLE THE DAMN WAGONS!”

“Unsling your Sig Saur Spears!”yelled Amos, the fighting rabbi.

The scaly horde that surged outof the rippling waters turned my stomach to see … even in this dim light.

Rubbery lips. Misshapen fangs. Longcurved talons at the ends of webbed feet. Slimy, scaled skin, mottled like theskin of a week-old drowned sailor.

And they moved. Merde, how theymoved!

 Scuttling like giant, demented fanged wormsstraight towards us.

I would have cursed Evans rightthen. But even with the Spears’ sound suppressors, it would have been a wasteof breath against that storm of noise.

But since Helen and I werelinked, I heard her: ‘I will take the fight to their master.’

‘No! I have one last trick.’

Her aquiline features were aliving, flaming question mark.

I was betting Darael and I werelinked, too, because of sharing time in Helen’s consciousness.

I turned to him. ‘Ask yourbrother for his sword.’

‘I have no brother.’

‘Distant cousin, then. I needMichael’s sword.’

‘Oh, no! Michael is not even avery distant, distant cousin. I will not ask that of him.’

Helen was connected to the two ofus from our shared experience.

‘No, Richard! I see what is inyour mind. Even if you could wield the sword, which you cannot, it would kill you!’

‘But you would live.’

‘NO!’

A blinding light stabbed into myeyes as I felt a huge presence loom over me.

‘Yes.’

I forced open my eyes. Immediately,I wished I had not.

An armored figure, twenty feettall if an inch, towered over me. I could smell incense and cedar waft from theblond … angel I guess you would call him.

Nothing like Darael.

His cheekbones seemed to be trying topush up and out of his imperial face. His azure eyes were slanted … and a bitpompous.

I have issues with … pompous. I haveseen too many innocents die at pompous hands.

“Is it Saint Michael, then?”

“There is no need to kneel.”

“And no wish on my part to do it,either.”

“What?”

Darael shrugged. “He is a bitlike me I am afraid, Michael.”

Those striking eyes stabbed intome. And letting me know he could read my mind, he said as gentle as an earthquake.

 “So, I see. And mortal chimpanzee, I haveissues with stiff necks.”

I nodded. “So, I, too, see … fromthe way you hold your chin up so high ... along with your nose.”

It was then that I noticed theworld around me, Darael, and Michael was frozen like a still photograph.

“So as not to upset the fledglingwhen I flay you alive.”

Darael shook his head. “Richard Blaine, have I ever toldyou what a great way you have with beings of Power?”

“No.”

“You never will … now.”