POV: NOAH WILLIAMS.
I closed my eyes for an instant.
When I opened them again, I realized I was on a boat… adrift in the middle of a dark ocean, under a full moon that shone intensely in the sky.
It tried to emulate the Sun, but without much success, casting only a cold, silvery light on the waters. The vessel was a small fishing boat. I looked around the deck and saw that I was completely alone.
The boat swayed gently with the tide, from side to side, in an almost rhythmic pace, like a net cradled to the sound of a lullaby.
The feeling was strangely comforting, but, at the same time, profoundly wrong. Incongruous.
Several adjectives came to mind, but I preferred not to choose any.
I felt like I was out of reality at that moment. Where was I? What was I doing here?
These were questions that arose naturally, but for some reason, I couldn't answer them at all. I focused on the ocean.
The waters around were black, a deep and menacing hue. Strange noises came from the depths: a rhythmic, metallic thud, mixed with the constant crashing of waves against the hull of the boat I was on.
That's when a strong aroma invaded my nostrils.
The smell of rotten fish… and sulfur. A pungent odor of sulfur that quickly dominated the entire boat. I then realized how strange that vessel was.
It was too small to be in the open sea. Its construction was bizarre. It wasn't made solely of wood; metal patches covered parts of the hull, like rough scars.
The cabin was tiny, with a small skylight on the roof. Inside, a rusty electronic panel comprised the controls. It was made of a light gray metal, now aged, covered with greenish and darkened stains like moss. Amidst the scratches on the panel, a number was marked: 23051925.
Analog instruments with brown dials, speedometer, depth sounder, and others I didn't recognize, swayed uncontrollably, like clock hands without batteries. It was then that I saw the mist.
A dense gray curtain rapidly advanced towards the boat. It brought with it a sudden storm, with winds that cut like knives. The comforting sway of the waves ceased there. The water churned, violent and dissonant, as if the sea itself had lost its rhythm and plunged into chaos.
And then, a dark shadow rose before the boat, breaking through the mist. It advanced with brutal violence. The impact was terrible, opening a deep hole in the deck, right before my feet. I strained to see through the fog and the gushing water.
'Was it… a tentacle?'
I had no time to think. I looked frantically around, trying to find an exit, a weapon, anything. It was then that I realized…
I was no longer alone in the ocean. Around, rising from the black waters like ghosts, were boats.
Dozens of them. Broken ships, monstrous wreckage piled upon each other, like a floating junkyard. Piles of corroded metal, twisted hulls, dead and forgotten stories in those cursed waters.
'B-but… that wasn't there seconds ago…'
I felt my feet lose the ground. Gravity seemed to have inverted, pulling me upwards. I slipped and fell backward onto the wet deck.
The boat swayed violently again, and this time the movement pinned me to the floor with force. When the boat finally seemed to stabilize, now elevated above the water, the stench of rotten fish hit me with renewed force.
The reason was obvious.
Around me, scattered across the inclined deck, were dozens of dead fish, swollen and pale. And a sound… a sound of goo moving, something viscous dragging itself over the metal and wood of the boat. Something was crawling.
When I stood up, trembling, I saw a long trail of green goo… and a tentacle as large as the previous one. Before I could say or do anything, I saw it advance towards the cabin. It enveloped it completely, like a python strangling its prey, and destroyed it entirely.
As soon as the crash of metal and wood being crushed ceased, the tentacle contracted and recoiled. When I followed it with my eyes, I saw something that generated such profound terror that I could barely breathe.
It was a monstrous creature, with an appearance… familiar?
'H-how is this familiar?'
The monster possessed a humanoid silhouette, but its gigantic head resembled that of an octopus. Where arms should have been, there were long, distorted wings, torn in several places, so sharp they seemed capable of cutting space itself.
At that moment, a deep whisper sounded in my ear. As cold as the storm surrounding me. As abstract as the monster itself that watched me.
The tone was calm, light as a feather, and so slow that I heard every phoneme being pronounced. It sounded like a… Reverie, coming from the deep sea.
The whisper sounded: "Cthulhu."
That name was so familiar to me… it even seemed like my own. But I knew it wasn't.
'Where the hell am I?'
The image before me was as strange as a mirage. But it occurred in the ocean… and not in the desert, as expected.
I stood frozen there, not knowing what to do or where to run. Despair began to take over my body… if not for the golden light that began to shine on the creature's face, revealing that mythical image as being just… an illusion?
I looked in the direction of the light. What I saw completed that mythological landscape in an even more absurd way. A gigantic maelstrom spun the waters around a golden pedestal, and in the center of it, there was…
An altar?
Yes, it was an altar, shining in a clear tone of polished quartz.
Above it, clear clouds brightened the dark sky like lit torches in the middle of a blizzard. That landscape was familiar… but why? Until, with a silent click, everything clicked into place.
My consciousness, until then confused, stabilized, and my eyes closed.
'Damn… this is the illusory effect of The Call!'
POV: HELENA IVYRA.
At that moment, I had just reached the stairs. With some difficulty, I maneuvered the platform with the girls, making them descend first, while controlling the mechanism step by step.
As soon as I finished, the previous realization came back. That man was probably after the cursed papyrus…
'Shit! What are the chances I'd grab that damn paper just when he shows up?'
I questioned myself, indignant, at the absurd coincidence of the situation.
I was agnostic, but given such an event, I suppose it was normal to wonder if God didn't have a particularly ironic sense of humor.
My small reverie was interrupted when I felt something abnormal coming from upstairs…
The monstrous energies of both behaved differently for an instant. I felt H's energy had abruptly diminished, without warning.
'Did Noah defeat him?'
I thought about it and decided to check the situation through Bala. I activated my secondary field of vision, but had difficulty seeing the second floor due to the flames and smoke filling the entire space.
Even so, in the midst of it all, I could still see the altar construct, still shining, static, fixed in the same place.
'Is the enchantment still active?'
I quickly brought my right hand to my wrist to check… and noticed something unusual. The strange enchantment of the papyrus was constantly glowing, even without me imbuing it with energy to activate it.
That didn't make sense. It shouldn't act passively.
'It needed a trigger to work…'
I put aside the enchantment's nature for a moment and turned my attention back to where Noah and H's energies were. Until…
I felt a strong presence emerge in the environment. At the same time, my vision through Bala froze, and my energy drastically weakened.
I began to feel an intense drain on my QPs.
My legs felt slightly wobbly due to the rapid energy drain. My constructs momentarily weakened, and the platform where I held the girls trembled before stabilizing again. But enough had already happened.
The platform plummeted down the stairs. I rushed down a few more steps and managed, for a brief second, to look at the first floor. Some shelves were ablaze, and the space seemed empty, except for the large hole created earlier during the exchange of blows, further back.
The pressure I felt increased, and I realized that Bala had his energy frozen, as if something was tracking his presence.
At that moment, I succumbed to my own weight, overcome by a strange fatigue that came out of nowhere in my body.
I noticed the papyrus had fallen beside me at that instant. I crawled with effort, feeling my magical energy being drained.
I tried to reach where the girls were, but my movements were slow, my mobility drastically reduced.
'What enchantment is doing this?'
Rose, who was near the door, saw me dragging myself and ran towards me.
"Thank God you're okay!" she exclaimed, extending her hand and straining to help me.
I smiled faintly… but then, a loud crash broke the dynamic.
Something plummeted from the upper floor, breaking through the floor amid smoke and flames. Burning shelves collapsed with it.
It was H.
He appeared before me and attacked Rose from behind with brutality, throwing her against the wall.
"The sanitation workers here don't clean up the trash properly… Let me do it for them." he mumbled, grabbing me by the neck and lifting me a few centimeters off the ground.
I struck his face with my gauntlets, but to no avail.
"Don't think you'll steal this from me," he said.
I tried to summon Bala to attack, but H, in response, gave a direct punch to my head, hitting me squarely.
My vision quickly darkened.
The edges of my field of vision closed like heavy curtains, and everything around me became an indistinct blur. I could only faintly see what was happening in front of me, as if I were sinking inside my own body.
He let me go. I fell to the ground with the weight of my own body, as if I were nothing, as if all my muscles had given up on me at the same time.
The impact of hitting the ground echoed dully inside my throbbing head.
From the corner of my eye, lying there, I saw him bend down. With firm, determined fingers, he picked up the crushed papyrus on the floor, right near where I had fallen.
I felt despair throbbing in my chest, but I couldn't move a finger. I struggled to maintain consciousness, but another loud crash echoed, making the ceiling tremble violently. More parts of the structure began to collapse, in a chaos of dust and flames.
I barely noticed when Noah came down. He appeared in my blurry field of vision, advancing towards H with a living flame in his eyes. I saw him try to strike H, but H disappeared again, leaving only an avatar of black goo that disintegrated with the fiery impact.
I looked around. The library was hell.
The beams groaned, the second floor began to give way completely.
The last thing I remember was Noah running towards me.
There, my vision completely faded… and I passed out.