Aristotle.
The Core.
Having eaten questionable sashimi all week, Gwen dearly missed a basic function of Human society that she had not imagined to be a luxury—cooked food.
She also dearly missed hot food, for no real manifestation of terrestrial cuisine existed here in the underwater realm. While the ingredients were arguably fresher than she had ever tasted, there was no sauce or condint, and unless she utilised her Witch Core, there was no fresh water for her daily diet.
As she laboured over the pulsing Core organ of Aristotle the Assault Leviathan, she snacked from the heavy plates laden with everything from sea urchins to shellfish, lobsters to fillets of every colour and texture. There were algae, too, which she could not eat, but the kombu proved both savoury and normal enough to keep her from gastronomic revolt.
She likewise felt incredibly thankful for her father’s introduction of “Dungeoneer’s” underwear, though hers were the latest Parisian product from Chantelle. After all, enveloped by water, she had to shut her mind from the reality of bodily byproducts or else lose her mind.
As she worked to inscribe her Leviathan, she also got to understand more of its temperant. Every now and then, while she laboured with Essence and the literal blood from her body, prehensile tendrils from the walls would touch her hair or knead her softer body parts with the likeness of an affectionate kitten. Though strange, Gwen accepted the affection from the internal organs of a creature the size of a suburb as another milestone of her adventures.
Her intimacy also afforded her knowledge of Lei-bup’s Shoal.
As a Leviathan, Aristotle’s intake consisted of the billions of creatures that made their lives around its enormous, sheltering bulk. The lesser of these were drawn by Aristotle into its innurable vents, sotis fed by its caretakers, other tis by accident. The slow but constant intake ant the Leviathan maintained a largely sedatory routine to conserve energy, existing more often as mobile geography than as a creature that actively sought food.
For this very reason, juvenile Leviathans were adopted and tad by the r, whose relationship with their living ship was give and take, becoming the Leviathan’s caretaker but also reliant upon the materials and food it provided from its bio-furnace.
Conversely, from a cerebral perspective, Aristotle did not possess the ans to communicate at a tier expected of humanoid rn. This remained true even as the Mandala grew in size with the Empathic Link built into the design of her Soul Tap. What Gwen felt for the creature, or what the creature felt for her, was not an emotion that could be frad accurately by the limitations of sapient speech. Instead, she described the link between her and her Leviathan to Lei-bup as sothing akin to hormonal expressions, a link established upon strange wavelengths of dependence, pleasure, eagerness, as well as pain, avoidance and loathing.
In turn, Lei-bup offered that this was what her followers felt for Gwen and, to a degree, her Shoggoth. The ecstasy of consumption, the horror of being consud, the tingle of their enemy’s insane terror and the relief of being spared by their God—all produced fertile ground for Faith.
Gwen did not know how to genuinely respond to her High Priest’s cloister confessions other than to accept them and then settle down to teach her lieutenants the Essence Link Mandala. Once she began the long labour, Gwen realised that the tiers of the Mandalas and their Glyphs were shalessly plagiarised from the Shaman Magic of the bipedal Steppe folk. In fact, the Arch-Arcanists of Suilven had even nad the various tiers of control the sa as the Khan’s blood magic.
As the Pale Priestess, she occupied the pole position of the Great Khan.
Which was followed by her selection of Orkoks, each leading their Ordu.
They would then select their Tuns, and her Tuns would mark their Mingats, and so on.
By the ti the vitality thinned into the ranks of the rank-and-file Nokud—their only purpose lay in the potential for her Shoggoth to differentiate ally from foe—which, in her opinion, was guaranteed only by a scenario within a target-rich environnt.
Once her marking of Aristotle was nearly complete, she began work on the elite bloodlines of the main rman factions making up her Shoal, imprinting her psyche onto the most ardent of her imdiate followers.
Chief of her priests of power was Lei-bup, whose initiation began when she and the Chinese governnt called upon an extraterrestrial being with little to no thought to the natives of the “Shoggoth atoll.” Lei-bup, as her most devoted follower, learned her Necromancy with the fervency of an eager virgin, surprising Gwen with the imdiacy of his supernatural expertise. Was skill transference also a matter of Faith? Gwen could not be certain, though she had heard of such occurrences within the Knight Orders, where Relics could be imbued with mories and emotions of their previous Faith users. What she did not miss at all was the vision of a half-disrobed Lei-bup with his girth exposed. Despite having seen Caliban’s transformations in her darkest dreams, the actuality of rubbery black tentacles half-fused, half-latched onto the porous, pockmarked skin of her High Priest stirred feelings of revulsion Gwen did not know she possessed. It also did not help that, in the process of her inscription, a foul, squid-ink substance would ooze from the wounds or burst from an adjacent chamber, staining her Druidic dress.
Once the quivering Lei-bup received his blessing, he kissed her hand, near-swallowing her forearm as tears of gratitude oozed down his face, then swam away to practise his subordinate Mandala upon his minions.
The second to receive her personal touch was, much to Gwen’s relief, the ancient vizier-like r with the likeness of a bipedal leatherback sea turtle. Of all her r, the “Secretary” of Aristotle’s interior industries was the sole survivor of his terra-bound, kelp-farming Clan, making him a sworn enemy of the various Vels. Lim-Duk was the r-turtle’s na, and the creature bore the invasion of her Void-tipped fingers with a grim determination.
Three days later, she marked the “twins”. These were a pair of rare Sea Witches who had sought out Lei-bup’s Shoal as shelter from the Vel’s constant encroachnt. Like the r-turtle, they were orphans of the sa diaspora, though their kin remained plenty aboard Aristotle. Unlike Lei-bup, who seed to delight in collecting as many Shoggoth appendages as he was able, the r-won were more subtle in hiding their multitude of slithering, lamprey-lipped tendrils in the masses of their kelp-like hair. Unable to distinguish the two physically, Gwen added a little distinction to their individual inscriptions so that the talkative sister, Pelahwi, could be distinguished from the soft-spoken Velahi.
The remaining five were the commanders of her elite forces, the Strung(s) of her Great Shoal Forward.
The Wave Rider Captains were the brutish, predatory rn whose tribes ruled sections of the open ocean. These were effectively sea-born Mongols, oceanic nomads with no reef to call ho but possessing amazing mobility and combat strength. Nin-Ka was the most senior of her generals, possessing the tapered snout of a swordfish, the body of a muscular missile, and the bearing of an old noble of yore. His junior, a r-shark nad Kha-guk, was an even larger specin who deferred to the older creature out of habit and respect. Under these were her legions of Wave Riders, mounted r-infantry whose seahorse steeds could warp the water to produce incredible force and speed.
The youngest mbers of their Shoal were the last to receive her blessing, and these were the short-lived r-crabs and r-lobsters that made up the bulk of her shock troops. Unlike the heavy-bodied rn or the ageless witches, the life span of the mass-producing crustaceans was numbered between two to four decades. For her Generals Dwi, Xwi and Kwi, the fatalism of life was offset only by the abundance of their offspring, whose bodies matured within a year and could go forth and multiply around the age of ten. However, with the blessing of her Golden ad, a profound, philosophical change had co over her many-legged r, for suddenly, inexplicably, they now pondered the possibility of life well past a century.
Consequently, her Decapodian flock had beco so faithful that she could feel the pulse of their psychic energies like the beating of a fatalistic drum, traversing from the surrounding water into the Astral space of her taphysical self.
Once her Faith-based MLM ladder was done, she returned to Aristotle’s Core cave to complete the mother of all Mandalas while her lieutenants gathered the faithful for their tiered induction downstream.
The work would be long and unyielding—but Gwen understood very well its necessity, for how else could they put a stopper to the endless harassnt from the Vels? How else could she sever the connection between Spectre and their most eager allies, the Followers of Juche and their newly enlisted Order of the Oceanic Undead?
June.
The Yellow Sea boiled.
To the passing Clairvoyance of Dalian’s Divining Tower, the phenonon of several hours ca and went without a trace and could only be remarked upon as one of the thousands of unexplainable occurrences of the sea.
To the Pale Priestess of the Door and the Key, the occurrence was a maelstrom of ntal energies built by a hundred thousand inscribed believers and their multi-million followers hoping to receive the blood mark of their progenitor.
Underfoot—for she had adjusted her garb to be sleeker and more exposed to maximise the tactility of her surroundings—her naked sole felt the pulse of Aristotle’s being, its hearts and lungs, its digestive systems, the fractured vision of its eyes, and its alien mind as an extension of her Astral projection.
All around her, the water vibrated, fighting the control of her Witch Core.
Weee—Weeee—
Weee—Weeee— Weee—
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Weee—Weeee—Weeee— Weee—
Gweeegn— Gweeegn— Gweeegn— Gweeegn—
A long ti ago, in a dream, Gwen had heard the call of the deep, and it had made her doubt her sanity. Now, as her long limbs stirred the secreted sli of her Great Shoal and her white body rose as a morning star above the ridged throne sitting atop Aristotle’s spine, she welcod it.
To either side, huge banners of shimring water willed into being by her Sea Witches displayed hundred-ter projections of her ascending self.
Below the throne, the blessed Faithful ford concentric rings with their subordinates, chanting mad mumbles of whole-hearted affirmation.
With all her heart, Gwen embraced her milky, murmuring flock.
Lei-bup had planned the day of their departure to be a ceremony celebrated by all, one to cent the Faith of her Shoal and, secondly, to signal to the watching Vel below that the Shoal of Lei-bup was about to descend into the deep sea.
Gwen drew up the power of Evocation built into her Astral-self and willed it into an empowered Clarion Call.
“Yog-Sothoth!" She called out the non-sensical words of another world, which seed to stir new sense into the sea of churning fish below. “Blessed be the Shoal! Lä! Lä! Lä!”
Weee—Weeee—Weeee— Weee—
Gweeegn— Gweeegn— Gweeegn—
As the fish rose to a new frenzy, Gwen felt the niscus of the Pri Material lean over the precipice. Against the temple of her skull, she sensed sothing like a prodding tentacle pushing against a paper screen door, trying to penetrate the barrier preventing its entry into the Pri Material.
And if she felt it—then all her Faithful did as well.
The Shoggoth! Gwen mouthed in silence. She understood that its indiscernible intelligence had found a beacon in the all-consuming sea of the Void and that its multitudes of mouths of madness hungered for what was being promised.
But now was not the ti, though by Lei-bup’s reckoning, the Shoggoth’s descent into the deep sea was almost certain.
In their final eting, her Mandala-marked council had reached a consensus on the thod of their infiltration of the Fifth Vel and its surroundings. Their ascent would not be a product of Human hubris but a subversive power grab by a Shoal without a lineage connected to the Vels. As Lei-bup had put very succinctly, their Shoal would be the third entrant into a decade-long, slow-decaying stalemate, for the r from the First Vel had visited precisely because Lei-bup’s commitnt could tip the favour toward Nin Pak. Ergo, if they were to “settle” in the Vel, there would be no contest—for the only thing Sarkonnian required was Lei-bup’s Shoal to make rry and ignore their devouring of the Fifth Vel’s forces.
And in the aftermath—Gwen did not doubt that Sarkonnian would turn her forces on Lei-bup and seek to erase his Shoal before they beca another contender for the rulership of the Vel portal.
To have dread of such toxic diplomacy, Sarkonnian was not an easy opponent—but Gwen knew enough of history and lore to discern that the sa blade of diplomacy cut both ways. Indeed, if they were to usurp a section of Bright Reef and occupy one of its spaces—who would first dare to move against them?
If Nin Pak were to rebuke Lei-bup, she would join forces with Sarkonnian and lubricate the Vel’s march toward total war—after which she would unleash the Shoggoth upon the survivors.
If Sarkonnian were to rebuke her, she would have Lei-bup enter into an alliance with the Sea Witch, thereby paralysing the conflict for as long as needed for the terrestrial empires to catch their breath from the catastrophes wrought by Spectre.
And amid all this—she would uncover the source of the Undead r, for that was her true concern. As powerful and vast as the r empires are, she did not trust that there were genuine limitations to the Followers of Juche’s gross perversion.
After Antarctica, she no longer trusted the old sciences. For a century, all had assud that r made extrely poor Undead fodder due to the poor efficacy of Faith-based Necromancy with Elental beings in an environnt tainted by Quasi-Elental Salt. Yet, the Followers were able to sohow produce millions of Undead through so manner of a phage, which ant that with sufficient resources, a numberless wave of assaults could be carried out on the Human world until Humanity was cut off from the ocean itself—effectively paralysing global trade.
And this wasn’t even half of it—
The targeting of weather patterns.
The destruction of agricultural potential.
The disruption of trade and transport.
All of it, Gwen felt, was the precursor of sothing even more diabolical that Spectre was cooking in the dark.
Slowly, the cries of jubilation grew into a contemplative, sanctified silence.
With a lurch, Aristotle began its descent.
The currents shifted, pushing the excreted slick past the ivory kelp of her Elf-grown garb.
The Pale Priestess and her millions descended into the limbless dark, lit only by the suburb-sized width of her Leviathan’s bioluminescent flora and fauna, spiralling upon a whale song of Weee—Weeee—Weeee—Weee—
The Yellow Sea.
Sowhere between the harshly lit Fortress City of Dalian and the lightless coasts of Pyongyang’s eastern seabed, a most unorthodox Shoal was on the move.
Its figurehead, the Pale Regent of Shalkar, was gently dismayed that there was no bullshit to waylay their descent into the depth nor disruptive incidents to divert their course. Indeed, if this had been her usual jaunt through an unknown landscape, she would have expected everything from desperate creatures in dire need of aid or bullying locals demanding toll or at least a random encounter tered out by the dice of fate.
When she asked her High Priest about the straightforward nature of their spiralling traverse from the surface down to the Fifth Vel’s city, AKA Bright Reef, her priest gave her a confident look of absolute assurance.
“Oh, there are distractions, alright, but they’ve been either assimilated or assimilated.”
She chortled at the familiar word.
“What are we, the Borg?” she let loose a rare Gwenism, a rare occurrence of late. “Like, the Shoal just absorbs them?”
“Of course.” Lei-bup shrugged at what was an everyday event. “The Yellow Sea is vast and rich, particularly because the Vel below spills refugees from the Elental Plane of Water into the Pri Material. Those lucky enough not to be assimilated by the Vel are left wandering the locales until they are either taken into a Clan or tribe, grow strong enough to establish their own, or co and find a Shoal to call ho.”
“I see, so what happens when we run into a school of… vagabond fish?” Gwen feared her curiosity was a dangerous thing.
“The Shoal can always use more food,” Lei-bup spoke of the hard facts. “If they aren’t taken by Aristotle, survivors who submit to the will of the Shoggoth and the Great Purpose can join at the peripheries and see if one of the Lord-Secretaries would take them under their fin.”
Gwen understood that the Lord-Secretaries was the newly coined term that her most blessed r had started to call themselves, modelled after the Elental Plane of Water’s use of lineage titles. Yet, the Great Purpose of Lei-bup’s Shoal had its theocratic founding in Marxism, or at least, the CCP’s useful interpretation of the equal distribution of labour. Those closest to her, by right of their distribution of vitality, thusly beca the “Secretaries of the Goddess’ Blessing”.
To Gwen, the neologistical gymnastics involved were as astounding as a Korbut dead loop, but it worked for her followers. After all, even as their Goddess-Secretariat, she possessed no authority to alter the r’s organic beliefs. Furthermore, how could she fault them? While religion might have begun for the Shoal as an opium for the r-masses, the literal nectar of life in the form of Aristotle's vitality now flowed through her fishes’ veins, affirming their faith beyond all doubt.
And so, like a Shoggoth, the Shoal consud every interruption in their course until, a day later, Gwen was inford that they had arrived.
As if reading her mind, which the Sea Witches may very well be, an enormous swell of currents in the form of a semi-sphere churned into being, upon which the external world was projected.
Nestled within the interior of Aristotle’s throne room, Gwen had not considered the implications of her arrival as the first Human to unveil a Vel, though now the prospect dawned upon her with the sa luminosity as the unbelievable vision below.
It took Gwen several monts before she rembered to breathe once more.
What she saw was sothing of a scale that beggared human understanding.
Instead of the limbless dark, a great gate of glowing nimbus, akin to a sideways oblong egg of light, nestled itself against the darkling plains of the deep sea. Around this Vel—this portal to the Elental Plane of Water—sat a circumference of coral constructs bathed in the radiant energies of its towering presence.
Gwen’s eyes doubted the city’s scale until she saw a sight that put the Vel into perspective.
A Leviathan was nestled close to the Vel, semi-detached to an arterial arm of the ring city. This gargantuan city-creature, Nin Pak's base of power, was older than Aristotle by a few millennia, which made it at least a fraction taller than her Assault Carrier.Yet, even set against a creature half a kilotre in height, the Gate of the Vel seed to dwarf the living city, almost tripling the reach of its highest coral spire.
Was the Yellow Sea even this deep? Gwen recalled from the research carried out by her mbers at the Bunker that its seascape was so abundant in r precisely because of its shallow access to sunlight. By that logic, if they played by the physicality of what could be observed in the Pri Material, shouldn’t the Vel’s portal pierce the sea’s surface and stand out like an obelisk of man’s destruction?
Yet, to her knowledge, the Mageocracy and the CCP considered the Fifth Vel a “deep” city out of reach of Human mastery of Watery Magic.
Was the Vel a Dungeon, then? Gwen recalled the impossible landscape that was Hengsha island. The size and geography of that sand island were also larger than what could be plausibly made to exist in the Pri Material space it occupied.
Whatever the case, Gwen recorded what she saw for her colleagues in the terrestrial world.
However, she was confident in her conjecture, for if Vels manifested as Dungeon spaces, then her Master’s frustration with the Vel in the Coral Sea had been legitimate. To destroy such a thing, they would need to venture into the Elental Plane of Water, a feat no Human Being had managed in recorded history beyond a few cursory minutes used to gather samples and data. To send an army of Mages into such a setting to find the being responsible for the Dungeon’s Core was as improbable as kicking in the door to Zodiam’s seraglio in the Brass City.
Yet, she felt a strange assurance. As the contractor of a World Tree, she understood now very well that the power to shelter the Pri Material against the invasion of the other Planes was a basic function of her world. The World Trees, the pillars of the Axis Mundi, were the windbreaks that would suppress the erosion of these Dungeons.
The montum of her body gently lurched backwards and upward.
Her eyes once more fell upon the bioluminescent vision of the circular city.
Despite her calamitous purpose, her academic mind reminded herself that this place was older than the Nazarene’s oldest scriptures. Even as a Human, she recognised the heart-aching beauty here: the city’s soaring spires that defined gravity, the profusions of districts that took no heed of the two-dinsional ergonomics of human space, the natural curves and flawless integration of its inhabitants that made the city a living reef…
To destroy and consu all of this… Gwen shuddered.
On the water screen, dust clouds redirected her eyes—first from the parked Leviathan to the city’s edge—then again from a further space in the gloom. Each grew brighter as they traversed the light-starved space between the city and themselves, coming closer to their Shoal.
“High Priest,” Velahi announced in her lodic voice. “We are being hailed by both masters of the Vel. They wish to organise a eting at the mid-way point, beyond the reach of our respective Leviathans.”
Gwen took a deep, cold breath.
Finally, the mont they had all been anticipating was at fin.
“Tell them we will et them there.” Lei-bup chuckled, unperturbed by what had kept Gwen awake for the past fortnight. “Also, tell them that our Mistress, the Pale Priestess of the Shoggoth, She who is the Gate and the Key, shall observe the proceedings.”
The twins chuckled, sending a ripple of shared mirth through the ranks of her followers, a feeling that was the absolute opposite of the steel-strung tension hanging her nerves by a thread.
“Transmitted,” Pelahwi declared after a few monts. “Neither are pleased by our demands, but they have both expressed the desire to accommodate our request.”
“Pale Mistress,” Lei-bup prostrated once, then a profusion of tentacles directed her upward as Aristotle shifted its internal structure to allow the gathered to exit. “This is a bit belated, but please allow your faithful to instruct this unknowing world of your divine presence.”
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