Amrita

  I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world

  to sow death and madness.

  Amrita decided that riding a shoggoth was a hell of a good time. Now that the huge thing was walking and they weren’t in the water, she was in no danger of falling off, but the longer she kept her hands on its hide, the more of its senses she could tap into. First she’d felt its emotions, and then after a minute or two she’d started to see through its eye clusters. She couldn’t even see the ground herself – she might as well have been on an apartment building’s rooftop – and so it was weird as hell, suddenly getting low-res visions of the shore four stories beneath her from widely scattered viewpoints. It had taken a while to even process what she was seeing. The shoggoth’s eyes weren’t good, but it made up for it by having lots of them.

  Then the little shit-stain mouse thingy had attacked, and Amrita was suddenly furious. Her fight with crazy Grandma Amrita was forgotten, and all she wanted was to smash the thing. It had been a thrill to catch a glimpse of motion through her second sight and yell, “There!” and have her ride stomp its massive foot right where she’d been thinking of. The touch of the tar-colored monster mouse had burned her shoggoth like a brand, and she’d found herself screaming in rage when it dug through a couple of her shoggoth’s eyes. She’d been so incensed that she hadn’t realized for a good long while that Gran had ceded control of the shoggoth to her. She was in charge, and she loved it.

  When the slimy little bastard poked its ugly head over the top of the shoggoth’s side, she hadn’t hesitated. She reached out with her mind, feeling her beast’s barbed feelers as if they were her own hands, and plucked the thing up. Tearing it apart made her feel like a Viking on a battlefield. Her blood was up. She wanted more, and whatever sorry asshole had brought pain to her door was running away through the woods ahead.

  “Get ‘em,” she urged, and the shoggoth stepped ponderously into the treeline like a dinosaur.

  “It can’t go far from the water,” her grandmother warned. “This one was meant for the depths.”

  “It won’t take long,” she said, not looking over. “Just gotta spank this fool.”

  “I can’t go far, either,” Gran croaked. “The sunlight hurts.”

  “Thought you said you were tough.”

  Her grandmother hissed something in her Old Tongue that Amrita almost felt she understood – something about killing? – and the shoggoth redoubled its efforts. Despite its size, it moved with lumbering slowness out of the water, and she could already feel its breathing labor in the afternoon air. She ignored its problems, ignored her Gran’s anger, and focused on the sight she sensed from the shoggoth. The images were washed out and indistinct, but there was something moving along the path that cut a narrow strip through the treetops. The shoggoth might only take one step every five seconds, but those steps covered a lot of ground. They’d catch their intruder.

  And what then, stupid? You gonna kill this poor sap? All your high and mighty talk about murder to Fish Grandma is sounding pretty weak all of a sudden. She shook her head and set her face in a frown. She’d scare the dude, that was all. She wasn’t a killer.

  They caught up with whoever it was just as he reached the glade full of decaying Big Boy statues. She saw him dart behind one of the chubby burger-wielders. She didn’t know it was a he, exactly, but it moved like a man, so that was good enough.

  “Knock knock,” she said with a grim smile. She sent a tentacle surging out to pluck the Big Boy from the ground and leave her attacker exposed, but the rotting fiberglass crumbled under the shoggoth’s mighty grip, tearing off the statue’s head and arm. Annoyed, she made it fling the broken part out into the forest and reach back for the lower half. The intruder scampered from behind the shattered stump of the Big Boy toward another one nearby. She slammed a tentacle into the ground right behind him. If that didn’t make the idiot piss his pants, then he was too stupid to keep breathing. The man stumbled and fell, scrabbling on all fours for safety. He wasn’t a very big dude, and his back was humped for some reason. It was hard to tell specifics through the shoggoth’s eye clusters.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  It was like the best game of whack-a-mole she’d ever played. She’d knock over one statue and send him running only to block his way with a cruelly barbed tentacle laid across the ground. Then he’d head for the trees and she’d tear a couple up by the roots to send him back toward the clearing. After a few minutes there weren’t many Big Boys left.

  “Having fun yet, asshole?” she crowed.

  “You’re a bit old to be playing with your food,” her grandmother said.

  “Ew. Like I want to eat somebody.”

  “Let the shoggoth do it and you’ll find it an interesting experience. Either way, just kill him. Letting you control the shoggoth has been good learning, but I want to be back below.”

  Amrita grimaced. The whack-a-mole wasn’t as fun suddenly. She slammed two tentacles to the ground as the little man raced for the trail leading back to the road, blocking his path. She made the shoggoth kneel and lay down other tentacles, trapping him in a rough circle of green flesh, red eyes, and barbed hooks. She gnawed on her lip. Was she really going to let the shoggoth kill this guy?

  Then he swung the hump on his back around to his front and stuck his hand in it. It wasn’t a hump; it was a backpack. He pulled out a crowbar and held it up, his posture one of defiance and despair.

  “Oh, shit,” she breathed. It was Olly.

  She didn’t even think about doing it. She simply withdrew the tentacles, lifting them all up into the air.

  “What are you doing?” Gran demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Kill him!”

  “Screw you.”

  Gran snarled and wrenched her away from the shoggoth’s back, rolling her over and shaking her hard. “What is wrong with you? That’s the enemy! He serves the Star-Born!”

  Amrita, her head and neck pressed against the shoggoth, sensed Oliver already out of the clearing and into the trees. “Tough shit, Gran. Missed your chance.”

  “I never should have let you control the beast.” The fish-woman tossed her aside and reached down, sinking her claws into the shoggoth’s hide. It immediately rose to its feet.

  “If you chase him, I will call the US Army and have them nuke your little city,” she warned her grandmother.

  Gran considered her, those black, bulging eyes inscrutable. “You know him.”

  She shook her head. “I said I’m not down for killing people.”

  “Yet you casually threaten everyone below.”

  “None of you look much like people, do you?”

  “Amrita, I appreciate your strength of will, but I tire of your stubbornness. You have no access to the military, and even if you did, you’re talking about destroying the very thing you’re meant to care for and grow.”

  “The shoggoth is cool, I not gonna lie, but you’re doing a shit job of convincing me of anything, Gran.”

  Her monster grandmother bared her needle teeth, looked from the road to the Pond, and weighed her options. “Perhaps I’ve moved too quickly. You’re the daughter I never had, and the timing is so auspicious… things are happening, child, right now, important things that I’ve waited ages for. I want you involved, to make up for lost time. But I see I was being unrealistic. Go home, Amrita. Talk to your parents about whatever small things they concern themselves with. Live in your squalid metal hut. When you lie down, you will dream of the shoggoth, and the city, and all that will be yours. When life above seems hollow and pointless, when your dreams compel you, come see me. We will begin afresh. You may miss out on the beginning of our new world, but there will be other important days.”

  “Neat,” Amrita said. “Maybe next time I visit don’t drag me by the ankle and knock me out.”

  A forked tongue flicked out from behind her needle teeth. “No promises.”

  Amrita couldn’t help but laugh. The lady was crazy, but she had balls. And strength. The fact that she was willing to let her go made the idea of coming back a little more interesting. She put a hand to the shoggoth, reveling in its size, its power. “Take it easy, buddy,” she whispered. “We’ll ride again sometime.” The thing rumbled in what might have been agreement.

  “See you around, Gran,” she said, straightening. “It’s been pretty damn weird.”

  “That’s how the world is,” her frog-fish grandmother said.

  Amrita couldn’t disagree, so she settled for walking down the sloping fin of the shoggoth’s wide back. It was nearly as steep as a slide, but the pebbly, sharkskin hide let her keep her feet. The tip dangled only a few feet in the air, and she was able to jump to the ground of the pulverized glade easily. Looking up at the shoggoth, she saw it from Olly’s perspective and sighed.

  She needed to go find her friend and make sure he was all right.