Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft by Don Webb

since Nan Madol. They argue that as Great Cthulhu makes human artists and mystics Dream, humans will give up their fixation with death. No race can kill a planet, they say. I warn them, there is no race as vile as humans.
    Worse news has come. The hybrids came to Devil’s Reef to swim and Dance at the new moon. One of the wandering rogue offspring has come to Innsmouth. He does not know that he is of us. His instincts provoke him to actions and accidents that he sees as chance. He is at the hotel. The mothers grew excited, their gill slits flaring purple. They will rise and seek him out. I see that this will lead to disaster. They will seek to nurture and protect him. What will happen if he merely flees them? They cannot kill one of their children even if his blood is nauseatingly warm and his skin covered in hair. It could take only one revealing our presence to harm us here. There is no Dreamtime in the walls of our new home. Humans have grown deadly, yet the mothers do not believe what the Spiral has told us of their war in Europe.
    It has happened, as I feared. The nursery parade gathered in town last night and the human saw them and heard the croaking of the nursery songs. The sounds released the Change, but he had not been fed the Dreams as the Innsmouth children had been. Even though I loathe humans, I felt pity for this long-lost cousin. I can imagine the rapid beating of his heart. I can imagine the cooling of his blood, which to him would feel like fear of death. The great priestesses had put on their tiaras and the hybrid priestesses had put on the robes. They made their slow, awkward way toward his room. It was easy for him to outrun them. Without the Dreamtime to guide him he would have seen this all as nightmare.
    With luck his shock will silence him before he can tell others, and then when the Change comes upon him, he will seek us out. His skin will grow scaly and only the soothing feel of salt water will bring relief. His nascent gills will swell, and our thoughts will be drawn to his head as the bees of his world are drawn to blooming flowers. The Beauty will overcome terror. Tonight I will pray and Dance at the thrones of my ancestors Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. May they soothe his mind and still his lips! May his Change not bring fear!
    There have been navy ships over our reef the last two days. We try to send them Dreams, but the steel hulls of the ships reflect our wills back to us. It is as I feared. It is not like the old orbits, when we touched their minds and they saw mermaids calling each to each. The mothers said the words of light and made the wheels of bioluminescence appear in the water, vast whirling signs. But this did not soothe the humans. Once humans have weapons they are not willing to be soothed, so far have they degenerated from us.
    Canisters began to fall from the sides of the ships, half our size. I began swimming. They were depth charges and they exploded with epic sound against our reef. The walls of our new home shattered, great panes of mother-of-pearl began wheeling through the water, reflecting the lights of the bioluminescent wheels and the explosions filling the sea with green and pink lightning. Shock wave after shock wave passed though the ocean—and dead and dying fish buffeted my body as I swam with all my might. Then some jagged pieces of the mother-of-pearl began to cut into me, and my dark blood mixed crazily with the glowing waters. I felt the drums of my ears pop, and the violent storm around me became strangely still. More of the fragments tore into me. I saw the arms of my mother floating by, leaving a wake of dark pupil blood and the smell of raw death. I prayed to Mother Hydra that she may Sleep and Dream until her next Cycle. I reached out for her soul and found nothing but the cold unforgiving water. Then a fragment of shell struck my face and I was cut free from my body. I tried to make my soul Sleep with the words that bring Sleep: Fhtagn nerzin kyron