Author's note: Hey, I'm still swamped at work and got a bit of writers block, but here, to not let the fic die have a chappy.
The three of us didn't say much as we slipped out of the medical wing, heading back through the strange patchwork halls of Miskatonic.
Which, considering I was a six-foot-tall sixteen-year-old wearing a scorched leather jacket over an IKEA t-shirt, walking between a thirteen-year-old tomboy demigod and a ten-year-old mutant fae-princess, was either a testament to how chill this place was or a massive warning sign.
"They really don't care," I muttered, keeping my voice low as we turned a corner and passed a lounge full of students arguing about which subatomic particles best channeled dark matter. "You'd think someone would ask questions."
Rhea glanced around, eye twitching. "The Mist must be hauling ass around here. Like, absolutely gunning it. Because I'm looking at this from the outside and I'd call the cops."
I blinked. "Wait...what mist? You mean like in the basement? It was cold, yeah, but not that foggy."
"No." Rhea looked at me like I'd just asked if lightning was wet. "The Mist."
Alice piped up, cheerful as ever. "Oh! The Mist is what hides the truth of the world from mortals! Mommy said it's like… fuzzy dream magic that makes people see something boring instead of scary! Like, if they see a monster, they'll think it's a really weird dog, or a gas leak, or someone with a skin condition."
I stared. "That sounds incredibly unhelpful."
"Yup!" she chirped, skipping ahead. "And sometimes it goes fwoosh! and just makes everything weird for everybody."
We reached the stairwell. Still no one looking. Still no one following. But…
A faint scraping in the ventilation above.
Soft. Metallic. Wet.
Alice tilted her head slightly, one ear twitching.
Rhea didn't say anything, but she had her knife half out.
I placed a hand on both their shoulders as we kept walking, casual but alert. The exit wasn't far now.
"Don't look up," I said softly.
The scraping continued.
We kept walking. Past the goth kids in mesh and leather reading from dusty tomes, past the wannabe mad scientists muttering to themselves over cracked circuit boards and open vials. Past an argument between someone in a lab coat and someone in a velvet cloak about whether electricity or sympathetic sacrifice was more efficient for gathering energy. Miskatonic was... exactly what I expected, and also so much worse.
Then a ripple in my bones.
The Black Suns.
Two of them. Hanging in the corners of my vision.
I didn't have time to curse before the first one flared.
Pain. The kind that told me my body was being rebuilt from the inside out, just like it happened the first time the suns came. Muscles swelling. Joints reinforcing. Height climbing like a skyscraper under pressure. My skin stretched tight over something more than human, my venom glands growing and changing.
My arm itched, then burned. I looked down. My tattoos were shifting, the lines rearranging themselves and forming a clean, sharp "II" on my bicep.
"No way," I muttered, I knew what I was, the suns supplied me enough to figure out. "They made me a Primarch... Hope I didn't get the male pattern baldness gene with it."
I was… what, eight feet tall now? Give or take? Still on the smaller end of the gene-daddy spectrum, but even so, I felt it. Strength, density, balance. Every nerve humming like I'd just leveled up in real life.
Then the second sun hit.
There was a soft pop in my pocket.
I reached in and pulled out… a plastic bottle of cough syrup. Label printed in Comic Sans. It sloshed gently. Still full. Oh. It had codeine.
I turned it over. No expiry date.
"Does it… refill?" I muttered, giving it a shake. "Can I make lean out of this?"
I glanced up at the sky, squinting like there was a celestial webcam trained on me.
"Yo, Big E, you watching this? I'm making you proud, right?"
I turned and saw Rhea staring up at me like I'd just grown a third head.
"Lucas," she said, "you're… huge."
I smiled, baring my sharp teeth.
"Yeah. Demigod squared now."
She blinked. "You mean you ascended? Like, actual godhood?"
I snorted. "No, no. Not like that. Not divine-divine. More like… superhuman, physical. Like if Heracles had a bigger brother, which then was raised by radical atheists."
Next to me, Alice stared up with gleaming eyes.
"You're so cool, Dad," she whispered.
I reached down and ruffled her hair, my hand bigger the size of her skull now.
"I know."
We were about halfway to the parking lot when we finally saw what looked like… normal people. A group of students hanging around a stone fountain, laughing. One had a football jersey. Another was bald and wearing monk robes with earbuds in. One girl had both a yoga mat and a six-pack of energy drinks.
It was like someone took a frat house and a Buddhist temple and hit mix.
Rhea squinted at them. "Are they… chill?"
"I think so," I muttered. "Or they're hiding it better than everyone else here."
Alice looked up at me. "They don't smell like blood or rot. Probably fine."
I opened my mouth to respond...
Then the ground bellow us shuddered.
There was a wet, groaning noise like meat grinding against steel, followed by a CRACK and the sound of something huge ripping loose.
A massive, heaving black mass slammed from the ground front of us, tentacles writhing, eyes blinking in random directions, mouths opening across its body with drooling, hungry gasps.
Shoggoth.
My eyes burned black.
Fire was my response.
I raised a hand, and from my palm erupted a wave of fire that roared like a jet engine, slamming into the shoggoth with all the force of the elements. It tried to rise, to scatter, to scream, but my fire caught it mid-melt, and I pushed. The flames condensed into a focused stream, a black-and-orange flamethrower.
The shoggoth was gone in seconds. Nothing left but a scorched crater.
The fire alarms started screaming.
All over the building, doors opened. People peeked out. Some were panicking. Most just looked… annoyed. A few took notes.
One goth girl walking out of a lecture room muttered, "Ugh, again?"
I wiped soot from my face as Alice let out a whoop, fangs showing, hopping in place with joy.
"That was awesome!"
Rhea just sighed and rubbed her temples. "Do we ever have a normal day?"
I pointed toward the exit with my thumb.
"Let's get out of here."
Back on the road again.
And by on the road, I meant crammed onto the Sparrow like a grown man trying to ride a toddler's tricycle. My knees were practically scraping my chin, my back arched like I was giving the highway a hug, and every time we hit a bump, my skull risked kissing the sky.
"Whose brilliant idea was it to grow eight feet tall before finishing a cross-country bike trip?" I grunted, trying to shift without kicking the gas tank into orbit.
"Oh right," I muttered. "Mine. Thanks, mysterious void suns. Very cool."
Behind me, Alice was swinging off my back like a monkey, humming a lullaby and chewing through a package of gas station jerky like it owed her money. Rhea had taken the sidecar, legs up, sunglasses on, looking unbothered.
"You're going to throw out your spine doing that," Rhea said lazily, sipping good old gatorade.
"My spine is reinforced with metal now," I grunted. "I'm ninety percent muscle. Besides, the ride keeps me humble."
Alice leaned forward, resting her chin on my shoulder. "You could try shrink back down, y'know. Stop being a walking meat tower, there's probably a god that can help you with that."
I considered that. I really did.
"I don't think it works like that. And honestly?" I grinned as the wind blasted against my face. "I'm kinda digging the view from up here."
The highway stretched out ahead, endless and cracked and sunlit. Trees blurred past like green ghosts. Somewhere, far off, a hawk screamed across the sky.
Harvard loomed in the distance. Sprawling gothic towers, ivy-covered halls.
We were a couple blocks away, parked under a line of skeletal trees outside a gas station. Alice was drawing figures in the dirt with her claws, muttering little war songs to herself like a good little princess. Rhea was perched on the bike's saddle, arms crossed, watching me like she knew I was up to something.
Because I was.
"I'm going in alone," I said.
Rhea raised an eyebrow. "Why do I hate everything about that sentence already?"
"I'm going to turn myself invisible, sneak past whatever security Harvard's got, magical or mortal, find the book, and then… probably start a fire."
There was a beat.
"Okay, yeah," she said dryly. "That tracks."
"It's the Necronomicon. The Necronomicon. If anyone in that library opens the wrong page, we're going to have another incident."
"And you're sure you'll be fine alone?"
I nodded. "Invisibility will do that, no matter how big I am. Invisible is invisible."
Rhea sighed and hopped down from the bike. "Alright. I'll keep an eye on Alice. But if you're not back in an hour, I'm praying to the cavalry."
"I'm not sure we have cavalry."
Alice looked up from her dirt runes. "Can I come?"
"Absolutely not," I said. "You stay with Rhea."
She pouted, then shrugged and went back to her snacks. "Tell the book I said hi before you roast it."
I slid off the Sparrow, boots crunching against the frost-laced pavement. The cold didn't bother me anymore, not with a furnace in my chest and an alien ghost demon riding shotgun in my soul. I stretched a little, feeling the strain of my new body. Eight feet of raw muscle wasn't exactly made for subtlety, but I'd manage.
The axe-bass was already adjusted, like it had grown with me. Gods, that was convenient. I flipped it over my shoulder, let my fingers run across the strings, and played a short, lazy riff, just enough to feel the magic ripple off it like smoke.
Reality shimmered, and I vanished.
Greater Invisibility.
"All right, I'm off," I said, even though they couldn't see me anymore.
Rhea didn't jump. She just tilted her head toward the sound.
Alice blinked at empty space and sniffed the air. "Smells weird."
I chuckled and popped open the compass. It spun twice before settling, a steady pull drawing me toward the old campus gates like a magnetic hum in my bones.
"Later, girls," I said. "This should be reasonably fast."
Harvard was… shockingly normal.
No moaning from air vents. No guys huffing ether in the corner. No Tesla coils duct-taped to IV bags. Just… brick buildings, people with coffee, and stressed students in hoodies arguing about Kant and crying over overdue essays.
I stalked along the outer path, invisible, barefoot to keep the noise down, not because I had to, but because it felt cool. A Primarch playing spy. The image alone could've made me a true Alpha Legion plant.
The compass tugged right, so I followed. Past a guy handing out flyers for an acapella group, past a couple making out aggressively on a bench. Everything here was so aggressively normal it made me grin.
I leaned into a wall and whispered, "Gods bless boring."
The compass quivered and tilted slightly down. I followed it to a library building, the brick was probably older then most things up in the USA, but it was clean. I passed through the doors just behind a girl fumbling for her ID and made a quick sidestep to dodge the motion sensor gate.
The compass pointed to the left wing. Second floor. Special Archives.
My crocs barely made a sound as I ghosted past a security guard who was clearly too invested in his sudoku puzzle to notice a damn thing. I took the stairs two at a time.
This part of the building was quieter. Dustier. Less foot traffic. I followed the pull through rows of old glass cases and locked doors, until the compass finally started vibrating and pointed straight at a door labeled:
"Restricted Special Collections: Faculty Access Only."
I looked down at the compass, then at the door.
"Well," I muttered, voice low and amused. "Let's go steal from the Ivy League."
The moment I stepped into the Special Collections room, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Something was off.
I moved slower now, weaving between dusty glass cases and old reading tables. My crocs creaked against polished wood. A student shelved a few books across the room, humming something soft and off-key. She didn't look like a cultist. Her cardigan said "I get up at 6AM to water my plants," not "I'll sacrifice your kids to Yog-Sothoth." Still, I kept an eye on her.
The compass pointed toward a far corner, where the wood darkened and the overhead lights flickered just a little too much. I followed the pull past shelves of old tomes and manuscripts. Most were sealed behind glass, titles in Greek or Latin.
I passed a case marked:
"Coptic Ritual Texts — Do Not Handle Without Gloves,"
and another labeled:
"Recovered From Göbekli Tepe, 1973."
I was getting close.
And yet...
From outside the window, in the tree line past the courtyard, I thought I saw a flicker of movement. Or maybe my paranoia was just acting up again.
I reached the end of the aisle. A blackened wooden podium stood in the corner. A single book rested on it, bound in cracked leather, no title on the spine. Just a faint etching of a familiar spiral.
I didn't need the compass to tell me.
This was the one.
I exhaled slowly.
I stared at the book for a second longer, then hawked a loogie straight onto the cover.
It hissed and caught fire.
The book started to twitch.
Then it screamed.
Like... a thousand whispers vomiting at once. Pages curled in on themselves, the leather cracked open like dry skin, and then it burst. Flames licked up the podium and into the air. The screaming cut off in a wet gurgle.
Job's done.
I turned around, flipped the bass over my shoulder, and started walking away as the fire spread.
Outside, through the library's high windows, I spotted them, figures in robes darting between hedges, shadows barely clinging to human shape. They rushed toward the building, arms outstretched, eyes wild.
Too late, suckers.
Zarathos started screaming in my skull, but it seemed that my new Primarch body held it at bay.
Thank you, golden daddy.
My invisibility held. They didn't see me. Just the flames and smoke. Just the death of their precious cursed paperweight.
I smiled, stepping through the side door and vanishing into the crowd.
CP Bank: 0 CP
Perks earned this chapter:
[Free] Primarch Physiology (Horus Heresy: The Primarchs)— [Transformation]
All the Emperor's sons are forged of both matter and psychic essence. In some, this manifests as immense psychic power; in others, as more esoteric gifts. But all Primarchs share one thing in common: they are to Astartes what Astartes are to children. You stand head and shoulders above your peers, obviously superior in every measurable way.
You can hurl Terminator-armored Astartes like ragdolls, punch through their plating, and move faster than even their enhanced vision can track. You're capable of lifting a small Titan under your own power. Breathing apparatus? Optional. Except in the most hostile environments or under rare chemical weapons, you breathe just fine—even in vacuum—and can fight for hours without air.
Your regeneration is swift: bruises vanish in seconds; deep cuts heal in minutes; full skin loss takes hours. Not that you're easy to injure in the first place. You can survive tank shells, molten rock, and sniper rounds to the eye. You are also extremely resistant to psychic powers—shrugging off all but the most elite attacks—though you may lower your resistance to allow helpful powers like healing or buffs from allies.
[100 CP] Cough Syrup (Jujutsu Kaisen) — [Making]
An item any user of Cursed Speech would love. This is a bottomless bottle of generic-brand cough syrup that never runs out. It doesn't taste great, but its utility is undeniable: any sore or irritated throat is cleared up instantly, leaving the user feeling completely refreshed. It won't help if you're coughing up blood, but for anything short of that, there's nothing better.
Milestones: None243Magus exploratorJun 22, 2025View discussionThreadmarks Chapter 42- A land cursed by god.View contentMagus exploratorJun 25, 2025#2,680The Starbucks smelled like burnt espresso. Pretty standard fare. The only weird thing was that I barely fit inside.
I had to duck under the doorway, twist sideways through the entrance, and practically fold myself in half to squeeze into the booth. My knees were up to my chest. The table groaned. Rhea and Alice sat across from me, sipping whatever sugar-bomb drinks they'd grabbed from the counter. I had black coffee.
Outside, through the massive window, I could see Harvard burning.
The cultists were going all out, robes whipping, sigils glowing, a few of them tossing actual spells at the firefighters like lunatics. One of the trucks had been flipped. Someone was swinging a sword made of bone. It was fine. Not my problem anymore.
I slid the Ouija board onto the table, the cheap plastic planchette still sticky from the gift shop price sticker. I hadn't even cleansed it. Probably full of haunted mouse vibes.
"All right, let's do this," I muttered, cracking my knuckles and setting my hands on the board.
Rhea raised an eyebrow. "You're serious about this?"
"I have a demon living in my soul," I said, deadpan. "Yeah, I'd like to schedule a check-up."
Alice sipped her frappuccino, leaning forward with interest.
I took a breath, let it out slow, and whispered, "Zarathos. You there?"
The lights flickered. Somewhere in the back, a coffee machine hissed like it was steaming a curse. The planchette trembled.
H-E-L-L-O.
"Great," I muttered. "We're doing this the Scooby-Doo way."
The planchette paused, then slid again.
I-T-H-U-R-T-S.
My throat went dry. I looked at the board, then at the two girls. Rhea was pale. Alice was grinning like this was better than television.
"Okay," I muttered. "Zarathos, you've been riding shotgun for a bit. I need answers. What do you want?"
The lights flickered again. The air got colder. The board quivered beneath my fingers.
Then it spelled:
B-U-R-N.
T-H-E-M.
A-L-L.
Alice clapped. "I like him already."
I watched the planchette twitch beneath my fingers . The damn thing vibrated like it was about to take off, and I couldn't help but lean in, elbows on the sticky Starbucks table, trying to look casual while also conducting a séance with a vengeance demon.
"All right, Zarathos," I muttered, keeping my voice low, just under the generic indie pop playing from the ceiling. "Here's the deal. I've got a plan. A great plan. Honestly, maybe my best work yet. Elegant. Precise. Kinda stupid. But mostly genius."
The planchette froze mid-twitch.
Rhea gave me the most done expression I'd seen all week. "What are you doing?"
I didn't answer. Just stared down at the board. The planchette slid slowly.
C-A-N-N-O-T-T-R-U-S-T-Y-O-U.
"Pfft," I snorted. "You can read my mind, can't you?"
The planchette hesitated. Then twitched again.
H-A.
H-A.
Y-E-S.
Y-E-S-Y-E-S-Y-E-S-Y-E-S.
It practically vibrated off the board from how hard it was spelling yes, like it was cackling inside my skull.
I shook my head. "All right, cut it out. This only works if we keep it lowkey. No flaming skulls in public. No spontaneous human combustion in line at Chipotle. You get me?"
The board didn't answer.
"You know endgame. You know how bad this gets if we fail. If I give you full control, we're going to level cities. That's not the play. You want to stop the apocalypse? Cool. Me too, but we ease into it."
More silence.
Then the planchette jolted like someone had slapped the table. It settled, firm and steady on YES.
I blew out a slow breath and leaned back. "Thank God."
Rhea was still staring at me. "You set Harvard on fire."
I lifted my drink and took a long, deliberate sip. "Yeah. Before the plan."
The board didn't move again, but I could feel it, Zarathos, smoldering in the back of my head, humored and feral and maybe just a little impressed.
She blinked. "Lucas. What the hell is going on?"
I tapped the board once more, eyes burning faint orange at the edges. Zarathos was with me now.
"We save the world," I said, standing up and cracking my knuckles. "Then we make it weird."
The sky was a miserable slab of gray, smeared like wet ash across the horizon. Classic British ambiance. Somewhere overhead, the Sparrow purred through the drizzle, skimming just above the dark Atlantic swells. The coast of England loomed ahead, chalky white cliffs rising out of the gloom like they were waiting for a second invasion.
I eased off the throttle, letting the Sparrow hover to a gentle stop over the choppy waves. The girls stirred from the makeshift tent they'd rigged up in the sidecar, blankets, a rain poncho, and one very suspicious roll of duct tape.
Rhea poked her head out first. "Why are we stopping?"
Alice crawled after her like a gremlin, eyes wide and claws twitching. "Are we doing a fight? I can do a fight."
"No fight," I said, dismounting from the bike and moving around to the sidecar. "Just fulfilling a little patriotic duty."
They watched as I unzipped the main compartment of my magic bag and rummaged deep. Past the mead keg. Past a pile of half-eaten Monte Cristo sandwich getting eaten by the two giant wolfs. And there it was.
A crate. Wooden. Stamped with some royal seal and the words Highland Estate Black Tea.
Alice tilted her head. "Is it poison?"
Rhea narrowed her eyes. "Please tell me you're not—"
I hoisted the crate with one arm and grinned. "Making the Founding Fathers proud."
Then I turned and chucked the entire box off the side of the Sparrow. It plummeted into the sea below with a distant sploosh, vanishing into the gray.
Rhea groaned. "Seriously?"
Another crate came up from the bag. "For Boston," I said, tossing it.
Alice's ears perked. "Is this like a ritual?"
"Yup. Sacred American tradition," I said. "We dump the British tea in the ocean, and freedom levels go up."
More crates followed. Each one launched like I was blessing the Atlantic with revolution.
"This one's for Paul Revere."
SPLASH.
"This one's for you people being all snobby."
SPLASH.
"This one's is so you guy's learn what a toothbrush is."
Alice clapped slowly, like she understood none of it but liked the chaos.
The waves swallowed the last box whole.
Alice blinked. "You think someone will be mad we littered? I don't want to get in Poseidon bad side."
"Probably," I said. "But I think George Washington's ghost just fist-bumped me."
London. Gray. Wet. Crowded. Cars honking with that pathetic little meeep, people stomping past with umbrellas like they were trying to pretend that they didn't live in one of the worst places in the world in terms of the weather.
I hated every minute of it.
The Sparrow cruised through the drizzle on silent engines. We'd gone low to avoid attention, weaving through streets and alleyways instead of flying overhead. After the tea thing, I figured we'd already overstayed our welcome in the skies.
Rhea was riding shotgun in the sidecar, hood up, face buried in a borrowed travel guide. Alice clung to the back of the bike like a feral cat, occasionally spitting at pigeons as we passed, offering the flash cooked pigeon to dogs and cats in the street.
We passed some big clock, probably important. dumb thing.
"Daddy, what's a 'lorry'?" Alice called out, licking raindrops off her claws.
"Don't listen to that madness, sweetie."
A double-decker bus honked at us. I flipped it off. The driver flipped me off back.
Rhea nudged my arm. "We're close to the museum. The compass is starting to settle."
"Thank the gods," I muttered.
We parked the Sparrow a block from the British Museum, that giant stone box of imperial plunder, and immediately I knew something was off.
People were patrolling.
Cultist-looking fellows.
They were posted all around the building, dressed in outfits that screamed we've never heard the word subtle. Some wore sleek black bodysuits laced with gold-thread runes, others had flowing robes and ornate staffs that sparked occasionally. A few were kitted out with blades and glowing ankhs. And one guy, I swear to Zeus, was dual-wielding khopesh swords like he thought he was in Prince of Persia.
I squinted through the drizzle, watching them march in weird triangle patterns. They weren't letting anyone near the museum. The entire perimeter was locked down tight, magical wards glowing faintly in the rain, shimmer lines zigzagging like infrared tripwires.
Rhea leaned over my shoulder. "...Are we sure we didn't land in a cultist meet up?"
Alice bared her teeth. "They look squishy."
To be fair, none of us really knew what we were looking at. But when you see a bunch of golden wearing weirdos guarding something with glowing sigils and nobody blinking at it? Yeah. That's cult behavior.
I tilted the compass.
Still pointing inside. Of course it was.
"We need a plan," I said.
"Kick the door in?" Alice offered instantly.
"No," Rhea said, crossing her arms. "We are not doing that again. We don't even know who these people are."
"They're guarding a magical museum full of cursed artifacts," I replied. "That's cultist behavior until proven otherwise."
Rhea frowned. "Lucas…"
"Fine. We'll do diversion first," I said, sighing. "But if one of them tries to chant in Ancient Sumerian, I'm hitting them with a flaming guitar."
I slumped against a brick wall just outside the souvenir shop, arms crossed, trying to ignore how damp the back of my shirt was getting. The girls were arguing across the alley, again.
Rhea, soft-voiced and fidgeting with her sleeve, was laying out something that sounded like it required three weeks of surveillance, a working knowledge of twenty-third-century laser security, and a team of invisible pickpockets.
"So... if we can distract the inner guard rotation by faking a distress call to the exterior cultists... we might get thirty seconds of—"
"Nope," Alice cut in, crouched with her claws out, eyes glowing faintly blue. "I say we go in through the roof. Claws first. Fire second. Panic third. We ride the chaos and burn our way to the vault."
"I can't regenerate like you!" Rhea hissed.
"Skill issue," Alice muttered with a smirk.
"Children," I said, raising a hand. "Please."
They both turned to me like I was about to deliver some mythical wisdom from the heavens.
Instead, I looked around.
Pub.
Pub.
Tea shop.
Pub again.
Tourist trap with Union Jack magnets and a high number of corgi plushies.
More pubs.
I narrowed my eyes. Focused. Harder than I had in a while. Wishing for a sign. A stroke of divine genius. A... brain blast.
Then it clicked.
A grin slowly stretched across my face.
"Oh no," Rhea whispered. "He's smiling."
"I have a plan," I said, pushing off the wall.
"No," Rhea said automatically.
"Yes," Alice said at the same time, already grinning.
"Hear me out. We don't sneak in. We don't charge in. We let them come out."
I pointed across the street, toward a strip of pubs packed full of Londoners still clinging to post-rain cheer and warm beer.
"We start a pub brawl. Real classic. Make it rowdy enough, fast enough, and all these gold-bedazzled cultist-guard-people are going to have to shift attention to the chaos. People yelling. Fire alarms. Maybe a fist goes through a window. I'm not saying I start a riot—"
"You're exactly saying that," Rhea said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"—but if one were to happen, and they rushed in to manage it," I continued, "the front door of that museum would be deliciously undefended."
"And then we sack the place?" Alice asked, eyes lighting up.
"We sack the hell out of it."
A pause.
Rhea stared between the two of us, her posture torn between horror and reluctant acceptance.
I clapped my hands together, stepping off the curb with theatrical purpose. "Well then. I'm thirsty. Let's see if the strongest thing in there can even get me slightly buzzed."
Alice cheered, punching the air like we were about to raid a fortress instead of stroll into a pub. Rhea followed behind, muttering something about international incident laws and how I was going to end up in magical British jail, whatever that looked like.
The pub was called The Cursed Badger, which, frankly, was already a good omen.
It was loud inside. Wood-paneled walls, decades of spilled beer baked into the floorboards, old rugby memorabilia hanging crooked over booths packed with locals. I ducked under the low doorway and immediately smacked my head against a chandelier. One of the lightbulbs cracked and flickered out. I gave it a look. The chandelier wisely held its tongue.
We got a table near the bar, where the bartender, a bearded guy who looked like a Viking who'd traded in his axe for a Guinness tap, gave me a long, skeptical once-over.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," I muttered as I settled into the bench, shoulders hunched just to fit. "I'm big. I look eight feet tall and I'm flanked by two girls who look like my daughters. One of them actually is, if you're curious. Just bring me the strongest thing you have. No mixers. If it lights on fire, perfect."
The bartender didn't even blink. He turned and disappeared behind the counter.
"Do you even get drunk anymore?" Rhea asked, sitting primly beside me, eyes scanning the room.
"No idea," I said honestly. "But I intend to find out."
"I bet I can drink more," Alice said, bouncing in her seat.
"You're not drinking until you're sixteen," I replied, "just like dear old Dad."
Behind us, someone coughed hard enough to knock over a chair. Two guys were already yelling about football, one in a Chelsea jersey and the other in what I think was just the saint george flag. Somewhere in the corner, a dog barked.
Perfect.
Time to light the fuse.
The first swig hit my tongue like liquid regret, and vanished down my throat like it owed me money. Nothing. Not even a tickle. Just warmth. Clean, empty warmth. I tilted the bottle of Everclear, draining another gulp straight from the neck. Still nothing.
People were starting to stare. I could feel their eyes on me. The pub had quieted just enough for the creak of the wooden floor to stand out as I stood, leaned casually over the bar, and grabbed a dusty pint glass from under the counter. The bartender didn't stop me. He just watched like a man witnessing his pub become legend.
I slammed the mug down, filled it three-quarters with Everclear, and held it up. The clear liquid shimmered under the lights like a threat. Around me, every head turned, locals, tourists, regulars, that one guy passed out by the dartboard. Rhea looked worried. Alice looked delighted.
I stood tall, mug in hand, towering over the crowd like the American I was, covered in tattoos.
"A toast!" I declared, voice ringing out.
People started to murmur.
"UP THE RA!"
The pub froze.
Then, slowly, I heard a stool creak. A pint hit the counter a little too hard. And somewhere near the back, a man who looked like a thumb stood up.
"You what, mate?"
Ah.
Rhea buried her face in her hands. Alice practically vibrated with excitement.
I broke the guy hand as it connected to my face, which was all smiles, task accomplished.
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Milestones: None234Magus exploratorJun 25, 2025View discussionThreadmarksChapter 43 - It's the end of the world as we know itView contentMagus exploratorJun 28, 2025#2,696The street was on fire.
I stepped over a half-melted traffic cone, the heat from a nearby trash fire flickering against my coat. Smoke rolled thick down the block, I was finishing my final solo in my guitar, Hypnosis making people have a free for all.
People were shouting. Sirens howled in the distance. A news chopper passed overhead.
I watched them work, standing half in shadow near the mouth of a narrow alley.
The mages were using their magics on the crowd, it was working, however I made sure to have numbers on my side.
I caught glimpses of falcon heads, ankhs, scarabs. It felt like I was looking into a tomb.
"Cultists," I muttered.
Rhea made a noise somewhere behind me. Alice was quiet, probably trying to calculate how many of the robed figures she could take out before they noticed her.
"I freed two of Ireland's greatest heroes," I said. "Cú Chulainn and Saint Patrick."
"I'm sure they're both very proud," Rhea muttered, dragging a hand down her face.
"They are," I said. "Saint Patrick must be thrilled. Most of these people are Anglican. And Cú? He's probably hoping this turns into the Second Rising."
I felt Alice grin before I saw it. "Do we get commemorative t-shirts if it does?"
"Only if you survive the tear gas."
The cultists, whatever they were, they were spreading out. Leaving their posts.
One of the robed figures traced a shape midair, an ankh, and laid it gently on a crying man's head. His expression softened. The panic drained from him like someone pulled the plug.
Rhea stepped beside me, her voice tight. "They're clearing the path."
"They're distracted," I said.
Alice leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "So what now, O Hero of Erin?"
I focused, my eyes catching threads of gold twisting toward a single place.
"I found a way in," I said.
Alice cracked her knuckles. Rhea sighed.
I glanced up at the museum façade. The British Museum, crown jewel of colonial loot.
But they weren't watching the walls.
I reached behind me and tapped my shoulders.
"Climb on."
Rhea didn't move.
"No," she said flatly. "Absolutely not."
"Not in the mood, Rhea. We don't have long."
Alice, to her credit, was already moving. She leapt up like a sugar-high lemur and latched onto my back, arms around my neck, legs around my ribs, her body warm and featherlight compared to mine.
"Team marsupial engaged," she whispered cheerfully in my ear.
Rhea sighed. Loudly. Then climbed up with as much dignity as she could muster while stepping onto a trash bin to reach my shoulder.
My body adjusted, weight redistributing, balance correcting. The biomechanical sinew under my skin pulsed in harmony. My claws slid from my knuckles with a soft metallic shhnk, longer now. Sharper. More like short swords than claws. The stone beneath my feet cracked slightly under the shift in weight.
"Hold on," I said.
And then I ran.
The world blurred into streaks of red brick. I moved like a missile loosed at the moon. The sound of my footfalls was swallowed by the chaos behind us, masked by sirens, glass, and magic. The outer wall of the museum loomed. I didn't stop. I drove my claws in.
They sank into the stone like butter.
I climbed fast and low, keeping my frame pressed to the wall, body tensed and spring-loaded. My claws gouged out deep marks as I went, gripping each time with perfect biomechanical strength. I felt the armor under my skin responding, reinforcing joints, adjusting angle and pressure for the weight of two bodies clinging to me.
My vision swam with golden threads and warding sigils embedded in the stone. I navigated them like tripwires, finding the seams.
We reached a third-floor window. Locked.
Didn't matter.
I wound back my fist and drove it through the glass.
The enchantment cracked like a mirror struck by lightning. Shards rained inward. I swung my body up, claws carving footholds, and crawled into the museum, Alice still wrapped around me like a cheerful parasite and Rhea crouched low on my back, to avoid the glass.
The inside was quiet.
A single golden sarcophagus waited at the far end of the corridor, half-lit by emergency lights. Hieroglyphs shimmered along the walls.
The window groaned behind us as I pulled the last of myself through. I crouched low, claws still out, feeling the tile flex slightly beneath my weight. Alice hopped down like this was a school field trip, and Rhea landed beside her with barely a sound.
The hallway was dim. Just emergency lights. Enough to see, not enough to feel safe. I didn't know what wing we were in.
I reached into my coat and pulled out the compass.
We had a mission.
Burn the Necronomicon.
The needle spun once, then locked toward the lower floors.
I nodded. "Down."
Alice adjusted the strap on her sword and gave me a thumbs-up.
Outside, I could still hear the riot raging, louder now. Something cracked like thunder. A flash of light filtered through the shattered window behind us. Tear gas. Or maybe a flashbang. Either way, the riot police had joined the party.
I took the lead, claws retracted, footsteps softened by whatever was left of my humanity. Not that it helped much. I was almost eight feet tall now. My shoulders brushed the museum walls. Every third step I knocked into a display case or ancient rope barrier. It was like trying to sneak a minotaur through a dollhouse.
Alice giggled at one point as I flattened myself behind a marble column that absolutely did not cover me.
"You're doing amazing, daddy," she whispered.
"Shut up."
We moved floor by floor, following the compass needle. Every so often I'd freeze, one hand raised, as a pair of robed figures passed by. They walked in perfect silence, their sandals not making a sound, their magic like a low hum at the edge of hearing. I watched them through my enhanced vision, sigils flickering in and out like faulty code.
They didn't see us. Or didn't care.
Either way, we kept moving. Past Greco-Roman sculptures, past looted Mesopotamian relics, past a display about Viking jewelry. The further down we went, the quieter it got. The lights dimmed further.
I stopped at the edge of a stairwell that spiraled downward into darkness.
It pointed straight into the pit.
Rhea peered down beside me. "Why is it always scary places? Why couldn't the artifact of doom be held up in some place sunny and happy, like an ice cream shop?"
And we descended.
Down past the exhibits the public never sees. Past velvet ropes and plexiglass cases. Through heavy doors left open by panicked staff. The deeper we went, the older the air got, more dusty.
To anyone else, it probably looked like a regular basement archive. Crated artifacts, tagged with barcodes and dry academic labels. "Unclassified Assyrian Fragment." "Unverified Ritual Implements." One display had a clay tablet under plastic wrap labeled "Do Not Touch."
But my eyes saw more.
Beneath the mundane, the myth bled through, gold filigree peeling away to show divine bones, the hint of the divine etched into the dust itself. A cracked mirror leaned against a wall, covered in black cloth, but I could see the writhing symbols beneath it trying to claw their way through.
"Gods," Rhea murmured, brushing cobwebs off a forgotten shelf.
"Literally," I said.
Alice glanced over. "Where?"
I pointed, subtly, at a tattered banner half-unfurled behind a rack of weapons. Roman legion sigils were embroidered over something that kept rearranging itself when I tried to read it.
We kept moving.
And all the while, the compass never wavered. Still pointing down. Down. Down.
Outside, I could still hear the muffled thump of police barricades being tested.
The stairs ended at a reinforced steel door.
We slowed, boots clicking softly on the cracked tiles.
But I stopped before we got closer.
So did Alice.
Something was wrong.
The scent hit us like a wall, iron, sharp and tangy, rust, wet and old, urine, and something worse underneath. Something primal. Like fear had been left out in the sun and curdled.
Rhea noticed us stiffen.
"What is it?" she asked.
I didn't answer. My throat had closed slightly.
Alice gagged softly, one hand pressed to her mouth. "It smells like—"
"Don't say it," I cut in.
"—a slaughterhouse," she finished anyway, voice muffled.
I pressed my palm to the steel.
Warm.
Which it absolutely shouldn't have been.
I extended a claw from my knuckle, slipped it into the seam, and with a faint click that sounded too wet, the door creaked open.
The room beyond was wrong. Not metaphorically. Physically. The geometry hurt. The corners leaned where they shouldn't, and the light from our world refused to go more than a few feet past the threshold. The walls pulsed, lined with fleshy bulbs, some the size of my fist, others the size of heads. Within them, eyes floated. Some closed. Others wide open. One followed me as I stepped in.
The parts of the wall not covered in flesh were scrawled with writing. Black ink, red ink, blood. Scratched in with nails. Ramblings in every language I recognized and a few I didn't. Some glyphs rearranged themselves when I tried to read them.
The air was heavy.
And in the center of the room—
He was kneeling.
Looked like a janitor, or what was left of one. Still wearing the tattered remains of a blue jumpsuit, name tag long since rotted off. His eyes were gone. Cut out. Cauterized with care, by someone who had done this sort of thing before.
He was cradling a book in his arms. Brown leather. Black clasps. It looked... ordinary.
It was not.
The Necronomicon throbbed softly.
The janitor was whispering to it. Words that didn't belong in human throats. The sound scraped something behind my ears.
He rocked slowly on his knees, eyes gone, mouth cracked and bloody.
Alice didn't speak.
Rhea muttered something under her breath.
I stepped forward, boots squelching on a floor that was supposed to be tile but now looked suspiciously like polished bone.
The compass in my pocket spun wildly. The closer I got to the book, the more it panicked.
Good. At least I wasn't the only one.
I raised my hand.
The janitor turned his empty sockets toward me and smiled.
His gums were blackened, and as his lips peeled back further, I realized the smile wasn't his.
Then he spoke.
The voice arrived like the scraping of bone across glass, bouncing off the walls.
"Well, well," the voice said, rich and dripping with glee. "Are you the ants they've sent to stop me this time?"
The janitor didn't move. His mouth stayed open, lips twitching as the thing inside him tasted the air through his stolen meat.
Then it paused.
Sniffed.
The sound alone made my stomach twist. Something inside me flinched, the old animal part of the brain that knew it had just been noticed by a predator that didn't belong in this ecosystem.
"Mmm," the voice said. "Greeks. That's new..."
Another sniff.
Then a pleased exhale. "And snif-snif... Turkish?"
Alice flinched behind me. Rhea swore under her breath. I didn't breathe.
The janitor's body leaned forward slightly, as if someone was looking out from behind his ruined sockets.
"Ohh... Leonidas would be so proud."
The voice laughed.
My claws slid out with a wet click.
The janitor's head tilted at the motion.
"Burn me?" the voice asked, still smiling through his broken lips. "How quaint."
And the walls began to pulse.
The janitor leaned in closer.
"You're a bit too late," the voice said softly.
"I see you now," it continued, the air tightening with every syllable. "And now that I do... I will hunt you. Through the long cold. Through entropy. Through the heat death of the universe…"
It paused, then smiled wider.
"...and then some."
It laughed.
It was the sound of tectonic plates grinding through human teeth.
Alice stumbled back. Rhea drew her sword with shaking hands, mouth a tight, silent prayer.
"These people," the voice sighed, lifting one pale hand to gesture at the walls. "These British. Such a charming fixation with the ancient. So desperate to possess the past they can no longer name…"
The janitor's jaw stretched unnaturally wide.
Cracks bloomed across his cheeks.
Then he vomited.
It hit the floor with a clank.
A trapezohedron, shifting in impossible angles. glowing from within like a dying star. My eyes screamed the moment I looked at it.
The Crawling Chaos giggled.
"My favorite playthings," it whispered.
Then the janitor's body began to melt.
First his fingers. Then his spine. Then the rest of him, breaking apart into a swarm of flies.
They burst from his form like a plague. Chittering, humming, wings slicing through the air in a droning crescendo.
I didn't hesitate.
My mouth split wide.
The belcher's gland kicked in, pumping compressed chemical slurry through reinforced ducts in my jaw.
My tongue tingled.
Then I spat.
A torrent of black-and-red fire erupted from my throat, incandescent with divine combustion. The swarm ignited mid-air, screeching in too many voices as flames devoured the front ranks.
Beside me, Alice joined in.
Her own fire surged out, white-blue,, twin jets of burning fury blasting from her mouth.
Together, we turned the room into an inferno.
The flesh on the walls screamed.
The writing burned.
The trapezohedron disintegrated.
The fire was still dying down when the first scream echoed through the floor.
Then another. Then dozens.
And somewhere under it all, like a radio signal bleeding into the walls, the sound of laughter. This one was louder. Wilder. Echoing in a thousand directions at once.
The Crawling Chaos was having the time of its life.
I whipped my head toward the door.
The swarm of flies, weren't gone.
They were moving.
Pouring out like a plague. They streamed upward, toward the museum proper… and I knew exactly where they were going.
The Egyptian wing.
Alice hissed through her teeth. "Why are they always heading toward the creepy sarcophagus section?!"
Rhea was already moving, sword drawn. "I don't know, maybe it's a vibe thing?"
We burst out of the room, boots slamming against tile, and emerged into a hallway now echoing with the chaos of a war.
The air shimmered.
We passed robed figures, the ones I'd seen earlier wandering the perimeter.
One of them screamed as a writhing shadow with too many limbs slammed into him from the ceiling, wrapping around his torso and pulling him upward. Another mage held out a glowing staff, chanting in Egyptian, sweat pouring down his face as the air tore open in front of him and a tentacled mass clawed its way through.
"Cultists?" Alice asked breathlessly.
"Definitely cultists," I said.
"Really organized cultists," Rhea added.
I stopped at the edge of a staircase as another sound reached me.
A meow.
Then—
"Help!"
A girl's voice. Small. Frantic. From the Egyptian exhibit hall.
I turned.
Alice grabbed my arm.
"What?"
"You hear that?" I asked.
"No."
She paused. Blinked. Then nodded.
"Oh gods."
I pushed forward, muscles tensing, claws twitching at my sides.
We ran.
Smoke curled up from broken marble. Emergency lights flickered uselessly overhead. The further we went, the less the museum looked like a museum. Walls stretched and curved in impossible ways. Floors flickered between polished tile and rough-hewn stone. A few steps later, the ceiling was the night sky. Then it was gone.
Geometry stopped making sense.
But the mages were fighting like hell. Each time they slammed their canes to the floor, the air snapped back into shape, just for a moment. Reality shivered, stabilized, then bent again as something clawed at it from the other side.
We burst into the Egyptian wing and everything went sideways.
Literally.
The floor rippled like liquid glass. Display cases floated midair. Hieroglyphs on the walls moved, spelling warnings to anyone who could still read them.
A stone sphinx was fighting a creature made of tentacles. The beast was screeching in a frequency that made my gums itch. The sphinx moved, slamming stone paws down with thunderous force. One of its eyes glowed with flame.
In the other side of the wing was the janitor.
Nyarlathotep was still wearing his skin like a jacket. He stood perfectly still, head tilted at a nauseating angle, laughing with a mouth too wide. His voice was an echo in my teeth. My ears burned. I tasted blood.
And in front of him—
A cat.
Sleek, black-spotted, big as a lynx. She stood between the crawling god and a man, mid-thirties, heavy beard, his hands bleeding, pressed against what I guess to be the Rosetta Stone.
The ground beneath him was carved with rushing spells, hieroglyphs alive with gold fire. He was sweating, teeth clenched.
Behind him, two kids, a boy and a girl huddled close. Trembling. Instinctively, I knew: his kids.
The cat snarled. Hackles up. Eyes glowing.
I didn't recognize her. But every bone in me screamed the truth.
Not just a cat. Not even close.
Nyarlathotep just laughed, like the world's worst inside joke. His stolen body twitched with each pulse of mirth, head cocked at an angle that shouldn't have been survivable, let alone smug.
"Bastet."
He said it like a punchline.
"The goddess of war. The Eye of Ra. Devourer of serpents, stalker of shadows…"
He gave a mock bow, ragged janitor uniform flapping, too many joints clicking in his back.
"Now look at you."
His grin stretched wider than his face allowed, teeth catching the light like wet bone.
"Reduced to a pet."
The cat snarled low, but didn't move.
Nyarlathotep took a slow, theatrical breath, the air hissing between his teeth.
"Oh, don't get offended, little mewling priestess. You know I'm right. This—" he gestured around the chaos, the burning wings of the museum "—this is all that remains of your empire. Sand and glass."
His voice dropped, like oil.
"You used to command legions. You once held sway beside Ra himself. And now?" His hand flicked toward the trembling kids behind the bleeding man. "Now you bare your teeth for them. Mortal worms. Half-blood trash."