Chapter 15: Little Sister

When I opened my eyes I expected to find myself on the fields of Elysium, finally having succumbed to one of the monsters I fought for a living. But my surroundings didn't look anywhere near comforting enough for that to be the case. Everything looked weirdly hazy as if I were in a dream, but if it was a dream it would have certainly been a nightmare. Everything was red and black and even though my surroundings didn't look fleshy they still felt visceral, as if I was inside something. It was warm, almost body temperature, and the only sound I could hear reminded me a whole lot of a heartbeat, though oddly muffled.

For a moment I worried I had somehow been sucked Outside and was now in the realm of Shub-Niggurath herself, but the place felt too real.

I walked and walked for who knows how long. The place was comprised of one long, winding corridor with the iron bars of prison cells on either side. The place was clearly meant to be a prison but it felt... off. The place looked deserted but it didn't feel dead.

I entertained the thought that I had simply fallen asleep after killing the Dark Young and this was just a dream I was having. My suspicion didn't immediately die when I tried to pinch myself and it didn't hurt, but my thought processes seemed far too clear for this to be a dream.

If it was a dream the only way to wake up would be to find whatever terribly symbolic thing there was to find at the end of the corridor and get the crap scared out of me. If it wasn't a dream I needed to know what was happening. So whatever the case I needed to press onward.

After what felt like hours but might have been minutes – time didn't really seem to matter in this place – I finally reached the end of the corridor. The cells so far had been to either side of the corridor but at the end of the corridor was one single cell dead ahead. And, unlike all the other hundreds of cells I must have passed, this one wasn't empty.

In it sat a girl. She was huddled in a corner, with her back against the wall, her knees pulled close and her arms wrapped around her legs. She was dressed in a sheer white dress and her hair was straight and black and so long it pooled on the ground around her.

Now, I make no secret out of the fact that I'm a suspicious bastard by inclination and experience, so 'gorgeous girl cowering in a creepy place that may or may not be in a dream' did not make me drop my guard much. That being said I knew there was no getting around talking to her if I wanted answers, so I called out: “Hey, are you alright?”

Her head snapped up and I half expected her to have a creepy monster face and scream at me right before I woke up, but when she looked up at me she just looked like a girl. She had a gorgeous face, high cheekbones and a sharp chin, a single beauty mark right underneath her right eye, and the only thing that marred her beauty were the shadows under her eyes, either from crying or lack of sleep or both.

“Who are you?”, she asked, her voice holding clear suspicion. Ironically, this made me trust her quite a bit more. If she were trying to sucker me she would be trying to ingratiate herself to me, not question my being here.

“I'm Felix”, I said. “Who are you? Where are we?”

Her brow furrowed, as if she suddenly realized that I was really here and not just an illusion. She stood up and I finally got a good look at her body. Her hair was in fact so long that it hung down to her hips and she had a perfect hourglass figure except for maybe a bit of baby fat on her ribs and her breasts were huge and beautifully shaped. I usually didn't notice breast size on women much so let that speak to how impressive her chest was that even I noticed.

“I'm Syr”, she said. “How are you here?”

“I don't even know where 'here' is”, I said. “I just killed a Dark Young and here I am.”

Her brow furrowed again. She seemed to have a fairly expressive face. “What's a Dark Young?”

I shrugged. “Weird tree-looking things with tentacles for branches and hooves for roots. Kept muttering about a little sister.”

Her eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, those things. I've been calling them canker trees.”

“Yeah, that fits”, I said. “But how do you know them?”

She scrunched up her face. “I...”, she paused and clutched her temple. “My memory is fuzzy. I do remember seeing some of them. The way they talked I got the feeling I was the little sister they were talking about. Which is weird because I don't have older siblings, I just have a little brother. I'm the big sister if anything.”

I didn't have anything to say about that, so I asked: “So, where are we? And how do I get you out of here?”

“I... don't know”, she said, sounding frustrated. “I know I'm stuck here. I thought I was all alone here and I have no idea how you managed to get in here.”

“How did you get stuck here, then?”, I asked.

She shook her head. “No idea. As I said, my memory is fuzzy. The last things I remember were... around my nineteenth birthday.”

Something to do with reaching her age of majority?, I wondered.

“Go on”, I said.

“I'd been noticing weird things. A goat's head at the butcher muttering obscenities, birds flying backwards, that sort of thing. Then the night after my birthday I remember going into the woods. I don't even know why I did that and ever since then... nothing. Well, not nothing, but nothing coherent enough to make sense of.”

“Alright, so if you don't remember then I guess brute force will have to do.” I reached for my bag of holding to pull out a mace to smash the bars of her cell in but found no bag of holding. In fact when I looked down I saw that I was wearing a white tunic with blue embroidery and a dark pair of pants, the clothes I'd worn when I'd killed Absalom.

I shook it off and grabbed at the bars, intending to pull them apart but they wouldn't budge. I also noticed that though they seemed visceral, they felt just like iron bars to the touch, cold and hard, though even less yielding than proper iron should have been.

Syr shook her head and gave me a rueful smile, then walked forward and placed her hands on mine. “Thank you for the gesture but I don't think you'll be able to get me out of here.”

“But... I want to help you”, I said, realizing the truth of my words as I spoke them. She looked so sad and it broke my heart.

“Then... will you tell me you'll find a way to save me? We might never meet again, you'll probably forget all about me but... just say you'll help, give me a sliver of hope, even if it's a lie, please?”

I shook my head. “I'm not going to lie to you or make false promises”, I told her and looked her straight in the eyes. “Syr, I promise to look for a way to help you and once I have a way I'll get you out.” Then I reached forward with my right hand and gently cupped her cheek.

I felt her lean into my hand and then a single tear touched my hand and the entire world faded.

**

When I came to I was still holding the sword and it was still firmly lodged in one of the Dark Young's mouths, but from the position of the moons in the sky it must have been at least an hour later. I felt disoriented and from the way Alisha and Selene were shaking their heads they must have felt much the same.

“Did you see that, too?”, I asked them.

“The weird prison?”, Selene asked.

“Yes, that. Did you go exploring?”

She shook her head and said: “Seemed like a trap.”

I looked at Alisha and she said: “I was sure nobody would be able to hear me so I kept still. Did you find something out?”

“Yeah”, I said. “I made it to the end of the corridor and found a girl. Her name is Syr and she can't remember how she got there. Not sure how much of that I buy, but I told her I'd try to find a way to save her. No idea how to even start with that, though.”

“You don't think...” Selene pointed at the Dark Young's corpse that was starting to melt down into black goo, “that this thing was her?”

I shook my head. “No, she said they were referring to her as little sister, so why would she be muttering the same thing?”

“Alright”, she said, “now I'm even more confused.”

“So am I. But for now we need to sleep. Tomorrow we can think about this. I also owe you”, I nodded to Alisha, “an explanation.”

She nodded back at me, grateful I hadn't forgotten about that. She did look shaken and when Selene took the first watch and I held Alisha against me on the cot I could feel her shaking. She wasn't crying though, which was a good sign, telling me she didn't take it too hard. Tears were the last thing these bastards deserved.

**

The next morning Alisha handed me a bowl of porridge almost as soon as I woke up. The nifty thing about Alisha taking final watch was that she had more time to prepare breakfast. Along with the bowl she also handed me a question:

“So, who are these Outer Gods and why are they so bad?”

I could have just pointed out the freaky tentacle powers and pulsing cankers but I respected Alisha too much for that so I gave her the full explanation, knowing it might take a while: “You see, in this world we make a distinction between good gods and evil gods, right?”

She nodded and I continued:

“Honestly, good and evil aren't even the proper monikers for it. Gods of order and gods of chaos would be more fitting terms, but I'm not going to fight the whole world to make them use my terminology.” Selene chuckled at that. “Anyway, the good gods want order and peace – on paper at least – while the evil gods want chaos and war. Of course there are also gods who fall somewhere in between, beings like Loki or the Morrigan who are sometimes good and sometimes evil, but you need to understand that, essentially, all these gods think they're doing us favors.”

“What do you mean?”, Alisha asked. “What kinds of favors are evil gods doing us?”

It'd taken me a while to accept that as well so I couldn't fault her disbelief. “They believe in the survival of the fittest. When they create Dark Lords to terrorize the lands they think they're toughening us up. They weed out the chaff so that the strongest may rise.”

She glared at me so I held up my hands in a placating gesture and clarified:

“Obviously I don't agree with that but that is the logic they follow. The good gods meanwhile think that the best way to help us is to keep the natural order intact. They want us all safe and unharmed but they also expect us to do as we're told, which is why I don't get along with them either.”

“And what of these Outer Gods?”, she asked.

“Right. Now, the good gods and the evil gods obviously have completely different philosophies but in the end they care about us, or rather they care about this world, because they are part of this world. The Outer Gods aren't. They do not belong here. It's not that they were banished or something, it's that they were never meant to exist here. They exist outside of creation. They are so vile that the gods, good and evil, will put aside any and all differences to fight them. The Outer Gods want to destroy our world, each in their own way. The Black Goat is probably the most benign of them all, as she just wants to turn us all into mindless canker beasts that follow her every whim.” Then I paused and turned to Selene: “And now I need to ask you something.”

“What is it?”, Selene replied.

“When I said they were cultists of an Outer God you immediately drew your sword. Do you have history with them?”

She waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. “I wouldn't say I have history with them, but... there was a cultist of the Black Goat in our village. He was found out and stood trial in the town square. I was... twelve, I think? Anyway, they read out all the accusations against him, presented evidence, he was given a chance to defend himself and then he was executed. Half the things they accused him of were the vilest things I'd ever heard and the other half were things so insane I can't even picture them. He killed and ate his fiancee, cut parts off his own body and fed them to an avatar of his god – Now I assume they meant a Dark Young – and a whole lot of other things. I thought they were making things up but then they tore off his robes and... well... you remember how messed up that last cultist looked? He looked hale and healthy compared to the guy back then. He had goat legs, goat eyes, mouths opening and closing all over his chest and one of those pulsing cankers in place of his left shoulder, a mass of tentacles coming out of it where his left arm should have been. Oh, and he kept cackling at the accusations as if someone was reading out a list of accomplishments.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that's the kind of thing cultists are known for.”

Alisha looked a little green and asked: “Alright, but is it really fine to just kill them in cold blood? I mean, their gods are evil but maybe they're just being controlled?”

I shook my head. “As I said, these gods do not belong in this world. They cannot affect this world or anyone living in it until they are invited by a mortal. Well, except for the Necronomicon, that thing's an exception.”

“What's a Necronomicon?”, Alisha asked.

“Ever heard of Necromancers?”, I asked.

“Sure”, she said.

“What did you hear about them?”, I asked.

“That they're pure evil and need to be destroyed”, she said.

“Correct”, I said. “Unlike all other forms of magic, one cannot be born a necromancer. To become a necromancer you need to read the Necronomicon and then perform a bunch of rituals that bind your soul to the three biggest of the Outer Gods: Shub-Niggurath, Hastur and Nyarlathotep. Oh and it also twists your mind along the way to make you actually want to do the vile shit these rituals need you to do.”

“How vile are we talking?”, she asked.

“Well, I don't know all the specifics but I do know that if you are a Necromancer you are inevitably a kinslayer and a cannibal.”

“Oh goddess.”

“It gets better”, I told her. “As vile as that sounds, it pales in comparison to what comes next. As I said, the Outer Gods do not belong in this world. But they still want in.

“And that's what they have necromancers and cultists for. Necromancers get a little bit of slack from me because they have their minds twisted. Sure they were probably huge scumbags already but I don't know how far the mind control goes. But cultists are, to a one, people who one day woke up and decided that whatever boon they expected to get from whatever Outer God they were considering calling up was worth more than the lives of every mortal and immortal on this world. Because make no mistake, if one of the Outer Gods manages to manifest in our world in their entirety our world will end. Only question will be how the world will die. Will it be overrun by the Black Goat's canker monsters, will it become a kingdom of the dead under the King in Yellow or will the Crawling Chaos drive us all mad so that we kill each other?”

I hadn't even realized I'd stood up during my rant but when I looked down at the two women, wide-eyed and worried, I sat back down again.

“Sorry”, I told them. “This is something I worry about all the time. Some moron with more ambition than sense dooming us all and us only learning about it when we can no longer stop it.”

“Yeah”, Selene said. “Now I'll be having a hard time not worrying about it.”

“To be fair”, I replied, “by the fact that we're having this conversation you can tell it hasn't happened yet, so maybe people are slightly less awful than I give them credit for.” I turned to Alisha and asked: “Do you think what we did was justifiable now?”

She considered, then replied: “I still feel awful about it, but I accept that killing them was a moral act after all. Thank you. For the explanation and for helping me with my conscience.”

“You're welcome”, I told her. “It's commendable that you hesitate to kill people and I appreciate it but cultists are the one exception you need to make. Anyone who communes with the Outer Gods puts the whole world in jeopardy.”