Sing to Me, Leviathan
Ocean waves gleamed in bright red sunlight, a sea of shattered crystals in perpetual ebb and flow. The first sun had already set. This planet’s second sun followed its descent behind the horizon.
A monumental event, inviting two people on a rusty old vessel to watch and wait for dusk’s arrival.
Old woman, young woman, they stood, together alone, upon the windswept deck. Clad in armor both scuffed and polished, worn from excessive use, and ready for yet another dive.
Waves crashed and lapped at the sturdy hull of their huge nautical vehicle. Against the crimson seas and skies around them, these two people looked tiny by comparison. Yet they stood tall and proud and confident against the vast watery infinity around them, impervious to the crushing emptiness above the surface, and the teeming wildlife that lurked in the darkness beneath the waves.
They awaited the sunset, sharp harpoons in hand, attached to chains and powerful winches. The blue paint of their vessel had mixed its vibrant color with the orange of rust. The chains between harpoons and winches, on the other hand were new. Even more polished than their battered sets of armor. Sterling chains, taken fresh from the Swimming City, hundreds of narels away from their current location.
Darkness scarcely draped itself over the endless aquatic realm of this world.
And whenever it did, the Leviathan rose from its depths.
For now, only the crimson orb in the sky reflected off the opaque surfaces of their helmet goggles.
These sunsets were as breathtaking as the dark clouds roiling across the skies in their wake.
A storm was coming. A storm they expected.
A warning. Of rain on the water, and the coming season. Of the living monolith that would rise from the depths.
The young woman burned to finally see the Leviathan with her own eyes, and earn herself a name by carving a scale from the beast’s shell.
The old woman had long earned her name, but cared little about it. She stared into the horizon, feeling that it reflected the dusk of her own life. She bore an exhaustion that no slumber could ever lessen. The lessons of a long life, the lessons of a sea hunter, the lessons of loss; of all those who had been dragged into the undertow, and devoured by the creatures of the dark. She hoped to bring back bounty, but part of her expected this to be the last time she saw the sunset.
She had been lucky every time. That luck, she believed, was about to run dry.
The clouds, inky-black, devoured all light from the crimson sky, and the ocean waves fell dark.
The young woman sensed that strange calm from the older one. The young woman’s vigor and enthusiasm mixed with a growing sense of insecurity.
The longer the older woman stayed quiet, the more it eroded the younger one’s confidence.
“Are you afraid?” asked the younger.
The older woman chewed on that question like it was a tasty morsel. She swallowed it with any pride and pursed her chapped lips before responding.
“Of course. One should always be afraid. Fear is like fire. A terrible master, but a guide in the dark. Like the lighthouses of the Swimming City. You understand?”
The younger woman let those words sink in. She swallowed then, eating away at her confidence and permitting some fear to join it on the surface.
Her armored shoulders sagged and her grip around the harpoon tightened.
“I understand,” she finally replied.
The older woman stood stalwart. She no longer feared death.
The dark clouds rumbled with a deep, growling thunder, and flashed with bright bolts of lightning. Strong winds howled across the vessel’s deck, and first rain began to pelt them. The rain would soon turn to a downpour.
Both women clicked their helmet’s lower sections shut, and slapped the red button on their armor, activating the oxygen supply.
Another flash of lightning illuminated a monolithic shadow beneath the sea—moving, slicing through the water, rising to the surface.
That giant. Leviathan.
As much as the sea made the women’s vessel look small, and they looked smaller yet upon its mighty deck, the Leviathan’s shadow made their ship look like a speck of dust on the ocean.
According to their tales, star travelers could even see its mighty shadow from the blazing skies.
“Remember,” warned the old woman. “It is not your voice you hear in your own mind.”
“I remember,” protested the young woman. “You and others told me so many, many times before.”
“Resist. Resist temptation to join it. The Leviathan summons all, and those who follow its call are lost.”
The young woman nodded. She swallowed again, and twisted the dial on her armor. The song of their ancestors began to play into her helmet, directly into her ears. The best way they knew to fight the voice of the Leviathan in their heads.
No more time for talk.
The older woman mirrored her motion, twisting the dial, and sighing upon hearing their ancestral song.
Lightning flashed again to reveal the shadow, no longer shadow, risen to the surface of the sea. Stormy waves parted, and the ridged titan body of the Leviathan broke through the surface.
They gripped their harpoon-cannons and waited. Braced themselves.
A tidal wave spawned by the Leviathan rolled towards their vessel. A growing wall of water, a dark and rolling thunder of its own, soon towering over them as it neared.
Tiny red lights flashed on deck, encased in metal grids, blinking in visual warning to signal what they could no longer hear over the songs of their ancestors. The klaxons of alarm, of the tidal waves, ready to crash upon them. The colossal wall of water engulfed everything in sight.
The younger hunter gripped her harpoon with all her life and awaited impact.
The vessel’s computer compensated, and the ship sliced through the tidal wave as the song reached its first crescendo. The front guard on the deck shielded them from the brunt of impact. Torrents of incredible force washed over them. Teeming with displaced aquatic life.
The chains attached to their armor and deck held. Tentacled things and fish remained stuck upon the surface of their vessel after the first tidal wave, flopping helplessly as they recovered.
The shadow now towered over them like the tidal wave. Another lightning bolt revealed it to be the living monolith itself. A wall of sharp scales, gleaming in every flash of light, slippering with the slick wet of water.
Close enough now.
Both older and younger woman readied their harpoons and fired. The tools belched jets of steam from their muzzles and the sleek bladed spears shot forth to that shadowy body. Lights flared on, bright green upon their harpoon cannon, signaling contact, and barbs having extended from the harpoons.
In unison, they engaged the cannons to the harnesses on their armor, clicked the release, and slapped each of the big yellow buttons on their belts.
The wheels on their belts whined with rage. The two hunters flew along the chain between winch and harpoon, hurtling towards the Leviathan. Like the vessel had sliced through the tidal wave, they cut through the waves and the gushing foam.
Hitting the side of the beast was like crashing into a wall, dampened by their body armor. It knocked the wind from their lungs.
The old woman’s impact also left her seeing stars, as her luck had run out. She had hit the side of the Leviathan in an unfortunate. She saw sparks flying inside the claustrophobic space of her helmet, and the song of their ancestors fizzled out.
The younger hunter saw how the older one’s helmet had been deformed from the crash.
Through the mayhem of waves and rolling thunder, the younger hunter yelled out to the older one, though the helmet and cacophony of the stormy ocean, all conspiring to swallow her every word. The older woman heard nothing, for her helmet transmitted no more sound.
Out came the elder’s blades, for such opportunities were rare. Out of all the hunting vessels that left the Swimming City to meet the Leviathan on that stormy night, they were the ones. And they needed its scales. To cleave from the Leviathan’s carapace, new shell for the Swimming City.
To the older woman, it was not about names, or honor, or even pride. If not her, then who else?
The Leviathan dove again. The titan sank beneath the waves, and the waves engulfed them as the Leviathan took the two women underwater. The harpoons in its shell rattled, and the chain-link between them and the ship quaked. They had to act fast, before it dragged them too far, and the pull from the vessel broke the harpoons from the shell.
Voices descended upon them. Even through all the noise, and the storm, and the confusion, and then the dive underwater. Whispers first, then a song. A song more enticing than the song of their ancestors.
The younger woman heard it only faintly, muted by the singing in her ears.
The older woman heard the singing, the lure of the depths, but drove her hook-blade into the carapace, commencing their cutting without fail, hacking away with routine and precision.
Yelling would no longer reach her. The younger woman still pleaded with the older one to hit her release button and return to the vessel. But the older woman either no longer heard or, or ignored her altogether.
Even so, she mimicked her mentor and hacked into the shell, cutting at the boat-sized scale.
Torrents of powerful water washed past them, turning every swing of their blade into a monumental struggle. The spiraling torrents of water around the Leviathan’s body swept up schools of fish in their all-devouring stream. Fish flurried all around them in scintillating colors.
Underwater, the Leviathan’s song only intensified, swelling slowly to match the volume of the song in the younger woman’s helmet.
Still, they held on. Armored, clawed gauntlets gripped to support what the harpoons did to hold them in place.
And they swung, defying the power of water, and the Leviathan’s speed. They hacked, and the cut. And cut. And cut.
They almost carved off the scale they were working.
And the shadow dove deeper, past toothy maws of the shark-like hunters in the sea, swept up in the Leviathan’s maelstrom, and swept away by its gigantic body, and the vortex of torrents that it delivered.
The Leviathan’s song eclipsed the song of the ancestors. A beautiful tale, of a city beneath the seas, harbor to secret lights, and a secret people. A song of those who joined the Leviathan in the darkness below, from whence all life once came.
The song, the song, so enticing.
The younger woman struggled to focus, so little it would take to remove the scale completely—just one more cut, and to pull with all her might—but she struggled to make that last stab. Hesitating. She yelled, no longer at the older woman, but at herself, to not listen to the song, and to only listen to the song of their ancestors. Just one more stab, then—
The older one cleaved the penultimate part free, and the force of the torrent pushed the scale off the Leviathan’s body. The heavy blast collided into the younger woman, denting her helmet, and sparks sprayed inside her field of vision now.
The song, louder than before, eclipsed all.
The depths, the depths, swim together to the depths. The shadow, the sweet embrace of shadow, the release all yearned for, right within grasp.
The older woman clawed at her helmet, then the oxygen tube on her armor. The bladed gauntlet sliced and severed its target.
A gushing stream of bubbles shot past the younger woman, who still struggled to make the final stab and cut, that last tangle of sinewy substance upon which the boat-sized Leviathan scale still hung.
Just one more cut, then to hit the buttons, and cause those winches to rewind, and pull them all back in, and—
The older woman sliced it free. She tore her belt apart. Severed from her lifeline to the vessel.
The younger woman screamed at her, and darkness quickly swallowed them both.
But the older woman, she only heard the song, and held onto the Leviathan’s exposed flesh. Her gauntlet’s blades sank into the flesh where she gripped, and held with all her might. To ride the Leviathan all the way down, to see the depths, and to reach that hidden city in the dark.
The younger woman, unable to stop her, screamed more until she had no more voice to scream with.
She resigned herself to their respective fates. Some part of her wanted to join the older woman, to oblivion with her name. The song of their ancestors sounded weak, and feeble, drowning in the song of the Leviathan and its secret city.
But her pride, her will to live, it all won out. She pressed the button on her belt in a torrent of crushing despair. Her neck almost snapped from the sudden yanking motion as the harpoons and the scale and she were all dragged back to the vessel, shooting past the schools of scintillating fish, and tentacles, and brushing past—
She shot onto deck, tumbling with the scale, skidding towards the winches, where alarm lights kept flashing on and off bright red.
The speakers in her helmet fizzled, and warbles warped the song of their ancestors.
As the living shadow gained distance, so did its song grow quieter in the younger woman’s mind.
Despite the storm, and the crashing waves, she ripped off the lower part of her helmet to gasp for fresh air.
She fought to catch her breath in the downpour and waves of saltwater upon deck
All the while, the klaxons blared while the storm remained, and the Leviathan sank deeper.
They had succeeded. Another scale for the Swimming City.
All the while, she wondered.
Was that city in the depths real?
Would she ever see the older woman again?
Sing to me, Leviathan, sang the ancestors. Sing to me that I may yearn but never see.
6 notes
·
View notes
PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT CTHULU i dont actually know anything about it outside of what i have absorbed from cultural osmosis which probably isnt that accurate
OK !!!!!!!!
the cthulhu is the main focus of the extensive cosmic universe ( the cthulhu mythos ) created by the famous author howard phillp lovecraft. the cosmic universe is comprised mainly of short stories and poems that hp lovecraft ( and other authors who contributed to the mythos—most notably august derleth ).
cthulhu is the high priest of the great old ones, a group of gigantic creatures that came, eons and eons ago, from the cosmic infinity that is outer space to rule the earth. their race is comprised of many many members, each with its own purpose. there are many unknown great old ones, but among the ones we do know are names like yuggoth, hastur, yog-sosoth, bastan and bokurg.
( NOTE: the great old ones are generally separated from the lesser races of alien species such as the mi-go, night gaunts and cthonians. although powerful and terrifying they are not necessarily gods )
when the stars are right they can plunge through space and time and from world to world. when the stars are not right, they cease to exist. they have form, although it’s not quite flesh and blood. it’s more shape of some kind that allows them to be perceived by humans and other earthly creatures.
obviously, each has their own ability, though many of the specifics are unknown. the cthulhu is most well known for his enormous size, devout cults and ability to turn any human who gazed upon his form for too long to insanity.
that last one is the case for humans who experience the presence of all cosmic entities—even if they’re not direct interaction with the great old ones. in “the whisperer in darkness,” akeley slowly lost his mind from too much exposure to the mi-go. in “the colour out of space,” the residents of the valley went insane because of the presence of that comet. the thing that makes the cthulhu mythos horror is exactly that. it proves to us several things:
our brains, although wonderful and complex, are simply not meant to handle certain concepts. no matter how hard one tries, they cannot fully wrap their head around the idea of infinity.
humans fear the unknown. we fear it desperately—almost irrationally. and our scientific discoveries are almost an effort to counteract that fear. sure we’re naturally curious but we’re also animals and animals live in a world of fear.
we love to worship. we love to believe that there’s something greater out there ( and maybe there is ) because it makes us feel less scared about the future. like how some will say “god has a plan” and maybe he does but what if it’s not a good one ?
now, the great old ones sleep in their stone cities all around the world. the locations of most are unknown. we do know that cthulhu sleeps in r’lyeh, the largest and most lavish of their cities, and that although he is dead, he dreams.
in fact, in the story “call of the cthulhu,” which supposedly takes place in the 20s, a group of sailors hunted down r’lyeh to try and find the cthulhu. they found him alright, and every single member of that crew came home either dead or mad.
so yeah. that’s the cthulhu. i could yap about a lot of other things and specific stories but that’s about it !!!!!
10 notes
·
View notes