VII — Notes on Shoggoth Ecology
The world-shattering implications of the crystal mural continued to tumble through my mind as Derpy, Mountain Flower and I left the semi-circular room to continue our search for Professor Rock Watcher. A cleaner moved in a corridor ahead, and I watched it with new eyes. There could be no doubt as to its providence now, not after what I'd read. It was a shoggoth, of a labourer sub strain most likely. If they had survived the fall of the Elder Things, had others? What of the warriors?
We crept forward through the alien world. The walls of the spire glittered silver but differently than either Rock Watcher's egg or the plating which lined the underground tunnels. It was a matter colour, a metallic slate grey. In places oleaginous discolorations hung like mould patches. Such marks seemed almost effervescent when viewed from an oblique angle but more resembled tarnished copper when looked upon from straight ahead.
"This place is huge," said Mountain Flower softly. Even so, distorted echoes of her voice ran up and down the corridor. Tortured ghosts of her words. "How can we find them?"
I didn't know but couldn't say that. "We keep moving and searching. Keep your ears open and look for signs of recent passage." The cleaners were deathly quiet; any noise we heard would be a clue.
We passed gaping abysses where doors once stood. They hung like the maws of great gluttonous beasts, but we braved each in turn. Some rooms were as large as lecture theatres, while others were small, closer to janitorial closets. Few had surviving furnishings, but the gross structure could give some hints. One room was formed of descending concentric rings, centred on a large dais. An auditorium of some kind perhaps? My mind went to the crystal mural and its carven demagogues.
Without my horn's light, the corridors would have been pitch-black. Even with such illumination, darkness lurked just around the next bend. Our path sloped up and to the left. My instinct is to name it a great spiral around the spire, but I lack the proof to make such an assertion. After three hours of walking, we reached something new: a door which still stood. Half seen colours danced over its slate grey face, haunting spectra which hung just under the surface of the metal. Warped reflections of Derpy, Mountain Flower and I hovered there too, the strange properties of the metal rendering us deformed and devilish. Mountain Flower looked particularly obscene — her image transformed to melted wax and corrupted with a shoggoth's debased organic essence.
Derpy placed her ear against it, then jerked back. "Noise," she mouthed.
The twisting colours pulled at my eyes and mind as I gazed at the door, but I managed to ask the questions which needed to be asked. Why did this door alone still stand? Why was it special? I voiced my thoughts, and Mountain Flower provided the obvious answer. "Because whatever's on the other side is important?" Part of me wanted to argue and pontificate on other options, but she was probably correct.
As a unicorn trained by Princess Celestia herself, I had many ways to bypass a door — from teleportation, to ripping it from the frame with brute force. In this instance most of my options proved useless. It resisted a phase spell, which would have enabled me to step through the no-longer-solid matter. It ignored transformative magic. All my attempts to cut or melt the metal failed. It even resisted a spatial shift, which I'd been quietly confident about, Professor Arc Ane having successfully applied the technique against the silver egg. None of this should have surprised me; it was a product of Elder Thing material science, after all, a fruit of the same tree which birthed mountain sized spires able to stand five hundred million years and eggs that fell from space.
A click came from the door, and it swung open. Derpy smiled, her eyes as random as pedesis as they roamed quite independently of each other. "Not locked."
The door led into a new corridor, off which split five lesser passages like the branches of a crude tree. Strange sounds wafted from the open door. They were small and muted and brought to mind sulphurous bubbles vomited forth from a primeval tar pit.
We advanced with utmost care. Derpy and Mountain Flower light stepped, wings beating whisper soft to take most of their weight. I used my telekinesis to produce a similar effect. The magenta glow of my magic cast a particularly sanguine light across the floor and birthed grim visages within the otherworldly walls. The side corridors branched off at obtuse angles to the plane of the corridor, angling forward and to the sides. Three headed left and two right. The central trunk ended in an ornamental crystal tree. My magic turned the leaves into drops of blood, and the bark looked utterly realistic, as if a true tree transformed to crystal. Only in retrospect does another oddity appear to me: the statue depicted a clearly modern tree, while the Elder Things grew only the primitive ancestors of the same.
The sounds came from the last passage on the left. We moved down it, and I did my best to dim my glow while maintaining my quiet hooves. Something moved ahead, and I froze in place, using my telekinesis to stop my companions too. A cleaner plopped from a hole in the wall, possibly a ventilation duct of some kind. Its body went from square to obese in a moment, and it hurried on its way. It was a big thing, its amoeba-like body bulbous and quivering. We followed after it and came upon a scene out of nightmare.
An immense shoggoth sat in a pool of organic ooze, from which the occasional bubble burst. Dozens of tentacles writhed around its overly smooth barrel of a central body, some small and sharp like scalpels, others large, flat manipulator limbs. Its form brought to mind the medical shoggoths of the waning Elder Things, but this beast had mutated far beyond that.
The obese cleaner approached the pool and stopped in place. Half seen colours swirled over its membranous skin, shades of red and blue similar to that exhibited by the ichthyic life of the abyssal depths. At once the medical shoggoth slashed out with scalpel-tentacles and sliced the cleaner a dozen times. Steaming slabs of protoplasmic matter fell to the ground. The butchery reduced the cleaner to a tiny cube, perhaps thirty centimetres to a side. A diffuse mass of neural tissue hung inside, not quite a brain but something eerily similar. Its body quivered, colours flaring, but even such grievous wounds weren't lethal, and it backed away. As it did, the medical shoggoth scooped up the offered flesh and added it to the pool. It ushered the larger pieces towards bulbous lumps that hung suspended in the liquid. I looked closer and saw them for what they were: embryonic shoggoths. This was no mere grotto of horrors; it was a nursery of abominations. Strange sounds emanated from the medical shoggoth, almost crooning cries. Tentacles slithered, and it stroked its unborn charges, obscenely maternal.
"Back," I mouthed, and we moved back the way we'd come. Derpy's eyes flickered from point to point, never alighting for more than a heartbeat; I read it as near-panic. Mountain Flower huddled close to my side, feathers spread in an instinctive fight-or-flight reaction.
Fleet of hoof, we reached the central corridor unmolested but could go no farther. A shoggoth stood in the doorway back to the spire proper. We'd left it open to facilitate fast egress, but our action had been notice. Its monstrous form bore closest resemblance to the ancient labourer type. From its body extruded two long tentacles as thick as my neck and six finer manipulator limbs, with which it could handle tools. Hard boils covered its opaque skin; they leaked a rheumy, xanthous coloured liquid which gave it an unearthly eldritch shimmer in my horn's light. Small sensor stalks twitched atop its body.
My eyes opened wide. "Teleport," I said in a hushed whisper and gathered my composure. In a crack of violet light I translocated through the open door and to the corridor on the other side. Given the slate metal's ability to resist magic, no other path was safe. At once the labourer shoggoth whirled, a writhing mass of tentacles. I telekinetically reached out and slammed the door shut. It closed with an oddly muted clang — solid for now but I couldn't see a lock.
An immense battering ram of force slammed into the door from the other side, but I held on with all my magical strength and kept it closed. Even so, it cried out like a struck gong, and my teeth vibrated with discordant tones. The shoggoth wasn't one to attempt a failed strategy twice and slashed out with its manipulator tentacles. They slice through the door, and the metal glowed red around them. With an eerie screeching sound, it drew its tentacles in two great curving arcs, cutting a circle through a substance I couldn't even scratch.
"Run!" I shouted and galloped up the corridor. Derpy and Mountain Flower flew beside, wings beating the air. The clang of falling metal sounded from behind, and I knew the shoggoth was on our tail. Its loping gait resonated with the terror of clockwork — thump, squelch, thump, squelch. Each repetition grew faster; each repetition grew closer.
Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch.
Every facet of my mind, body and soul screamed at me to flee, and I did exactly that, not thinking, not planning. From a logical perspective I should have led the retreat along our path of entrance. That way I would have known the lay of the land and been able to retreat to the flight sledge under the worst case scenario. It is a mark of the primal terror which so infused my being that the thought never occurred to me.
Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch.
With a horror without compare behind, I galloped deeper into the dread spire's hidden depths. Dark voids in the unnatural walls hid cryptic rooms and corridors now ruled by undying monsters. Mountain Flower put on speed and shot ahead. My friend Rainbow Dash can break the sound barrier; Mountain Flower wasn't that fast, but few things can beat even a slow pegasus on the wing. A second later she was back. "This way."
Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch.
I followed, down a side corridor and then up to a second slate grey door. She wanted us to hide? I didn't have time to argue. With a wrench I pulled it open and stepped inside. The room was empty, bare, but an unfilled doorway led to other chambers further in. Once we were all inside, I eased the door shut and cut my magic. That killed our only light. We stood in darkness, ears pricked for any sign of our nightmarish pursuer.
The silence deafened in the singular fashion of the susurration. It spoke of beings not seemingly present which nonetheless might be. Heart-make had spoken of it. He said the things from the spaces between spaces sought out such voids, to feast upon and breed in. 'It's in our blood to seek to fill them', he'd told me those long years ago. Perhaps that's why I focused on the sounds that did exist. My heart thumped like the mad drums of a cannibal sect inside my chest, and my exhaled breaths hung like whispering phantasms in the cold, stagnant air. Further away, feathers sounded against coat, that uniquely pegasus sound that spoke to their dual natures. And beyond that...
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Stone sounded against stone from within the unseen depths of our bolthole. My blood chilled; I turned. Now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see a faint glow from the room beyond the doorway. There was a shadow too: the head, neck and arms of an Elder Thing, cast twisted and slightly green along the floor. I shared a look with Derpy, and we advanced.
The light cast more shadows as we neared, and they struck out like the teeth of some great monster. Spike's words from so long ago came back to me: "Who dares open the door of his mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?" It was a part of a poem, using the metaphor a dragon to comment on the nature of fear. It seemed very apt right then.
A spell at the tip of my horn, I darted into the room and cast about for threats. At once I saw the Elder Thing. It hung suspended in a glass tube. There were two dozen such tubes, filled with queer green liquid and arranged in a ring. Each contained an adult Elder Thing, but these weren't the whole, healthy creatures discovered by Rock Watcher in the silver egg. They were twisted, deformed — legs, arms and even heads misshapen. Some were partially dissected, their chests split open to reveal a butcher's board of preserved organs. They were unmoving, long dead, but some otherworldly property of the liquid preserved them against even the entropic ravages of eon scale time.
In the centre of the ring crouched a shoggoth unlike any I'd seen before. Its protoplasmic body followed the pattern of an Elder Thing — four limbs, torso and defined head. Its lines were soft, however, making it almost a parody of its long gone creators. It more resembled a gingerbread pony or cast jelly than a true, living creature. It wore 'clothes' too, if its morbid garments could be termed such. Bones so old they'd turned to stone hung over its body. They mimicked a skeleton in exterior — femurs along the front of its legs, spine along its back, skull atop its crown. Some analytical part of my mind set to counting and came to the number 206. The bones were undoubtedly Elder Thing but weren't twisted like those in the tanks. They looked straight and properly formed. Older perhaps, taken from before the rot set in?
The debased creature sat cross-legged before a large block of black stone and slowly chipped into it, using what looked like a sharpened leg bone. The markings it made were strange, undecipherable. Geometric circles interlocked with crude pictograms and what could almost be mathematical equations, the style and underlying logic recognisable even while the notation was not. This was the source of the light, for the symbols burnt, as if removing the topmost stone had revealed a balefire core of sickly green flames. The pictograms were simplistic in the extreme, but within their barbaric primitivism hid sketches of pure horror. I saw stickfigure Elder Things bent in perverted supplication to a huge, globular shoggoth — a nameless terror from the world's hidden, eldritch past. I saw Elder Things butchered — their organs, skins and bones removed to create adornments. I saw visions of murder and betrayal. I saw the alien other the Elder Things had brought to this world, and I saw it turn upon them.
Clink. Clink. Clink, went the monster as it marked out another line. More balefire burnt.
The horrifying shock of the room held me insensate for long seconds, but I took a gasping breath and backed up. I forced Derpy and Mountain Flower out before they could properly see. The room was evil, a grotesque trophy chamber for a derange servant run amuck. It is only with reluctance that I relate it here at all, and I had no intention of letting my friends see such a sight.
As Derpy and Mountain Flower looked at me with confused eyes, I thought again of the crystal mural. It did not relate the final fate of the world's ancient masters, but I could imagine it now. Those twilight day Elder Things were betrayed by their shoggoth servants and slaughtered, their bodies preserved using advanced preservation technologies or vivisected for wanted materials. Perhaps they'd turned to their shoggoths in their infirmity and removed one too many safe guards. Alternatively, the rebellion may have been shoggoth instigated, the result of cumulative error build up through mutation and breeding. The shoggoths I'd seen were different from those on the crystal mural, and fecundity meant the capacity to change. Or maybe I was letting the shock of the room cloud my judgment. Even now, looking back, I am unsure of the answer.
In as few words as possible I outlined the horrors of the room. Derpy looked green and so did Mountain Flower, but she tried to hide it. We desperately wanted to leave as quickly as possible, but the lumbering labourer shoggoth might yet lurk beyond the outer chamber's door. Unheard mental echoes sounded in my ears. Thump, squelch. Thump, squelch. The dread noises played counterpoint to the sound of rock upon rock. Clink. Clink. Clink.
So it was we set to waiting, no light, no movement, no speech. In that unworldly void my mind turned to the shoggoths and their queer community.
My thoughts painted a resplendent horror, something which at once fascinated and terrified me. The cleaners were gatherers of some sort. They roamed the spire and the outlying tunnels, eating the small life which grew there. From this they grew, and when they reached sufficient size, they returned to their home and offered up their flesh. The medical shoggoths took that flesh and fed it to the young, though I imagine some must also go to other groups to keep them nourished. Why did the cleaners do this? What possible logic could drive them to offer themselves up for cannibalistic mutilation? I did not know.
And then there was the Elder Thing shaped shoggoth in the room so close by. I could feel its malignant presence — a wound gone gangrenous in my mental sphere. What of him? What was his role in this protoplasmic polity? A shaman who spoke the will of the ancestors, a leader, even a madpony locked away for the good of all?
My mind went next to the question of population. The greatest limitation must be food. The Uncharted North was a barren place, and I'd read no reports of shoggoths raiding the lands beyond. A second thought occurred to me, and it made my stomach churn with leaden weights of primal myth. Shoggoths required their food to be encoded with their own hideous genomic potential. This was the final proof of my most perilous theory: the Elder Things had crossbred their shoggoths with that early native life. Every living creature had a shoggoth's power lurking at its core, no matter its species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom or domain. I had a shoggoth within my chest, just waiting for the Elder Things' secret genetic keys to break free.
I shook and shivered, the cold of the spire sinking through my clothes and coat to leech my heat. The October Codex depicted the shoggoths as horrors without compare, the leashed warrior-monsters of a war which shook the foundations of space-time. The crystal mural presented them as great tools and assets, but it was biased towards a positive representation. A labourer shoggoth, not even a warrior, had cut through a slate metal door like it was nothing. What might one bred for murder accomplish, and could even great Equestria be safe if they turned their eyeless gazes south?
With wide eyes I looked around the dark room, imagining what lay beyond. How many shoggoths nested in the spire and the surrounding tunnels? They surely didn't have the resources to support many. Movement meant energy and energy meant food. That was in very short supply. But then there was the birthing pool. It had contained many embryonic shoggoths. I thought back and counted eight. The shoggoths had ruled the Elder Things' fallen realm for millions of years. Combine that time scale with their biological immortality and even if those foetal monsters took decades to gestate, they'd soon overrun the world. Was something killing them? Had mutation shortened their eternal life spans? Did their cannibalism extend even further than I'd seen? I did not know and feared to find out.