When Autumn next opened her eyes, she was in a dream.

A world of brine revealed itself to her mortal eyes. Long stalks of a kelp forest waved in the ebb and flow of the watery deep. Swimming amongst them were fish of great and gargantuan size, none of which Autumn had lain eyes upon before, whether in person or in books. They glid and glided past her without a care in the depth without a surface. If one were brave enough to look up, they’d never see an end; the waters stretched on into infinity.

Autumn walked on endlessly, pushing her way through the waves. She was unsure of her ultimate destination, but found herself keen to an obsessive degree to find it. It was as if her life depended on it.

Something called to her. Something nestled in the deep.

It was like she’d just awoken from a nightmare to only realize it was her life she’d dreamed…but also knew she was dreaming still.

A dream within a dream.

And then the stalks parted.

He rose out of the surf between worlds; a being of the darkness of life, of creation and before its ilk. Great tentacles swayed in the everflowing waters of death and mortal terror. They were endless, yet could be seen in their entirety, but couldn’t, but could, but couldn’t. They broke the mind in their scale.

Black eyes, a pair of which haunted humanity for eons, stared unblinking, for if they blinked even once they would end all things…or do just the opposite. They pierced all the same; drove a nail into Autumn's soul, but at the same time…didn’t.

A name rang in Autumn’s mind like a thousand broken bells, decrying the foolish who sought to name the nameless, bind the boundless, to make real the unreal.

Cthulhu.

He was not a god. Not in any way a sane mind might hope to know. He was something…more, or perhaps less. His glorious body was made from the darkness that dwelled between the stars, of the twinkling dying of nothing, born before the universe uttered its first cry. He’d existed before existence dared to exist.

He was before the idea of was…was.

The dreamer dreamt a dream of dreaming.

Autumn was but a mad witness to the glory of him. To that slumbering glory of madness itself. But in that madness, she was saved.

The Call of Cthulhu rumbled the waves as she was finally noticed.

A choked gasp of blood cleared Autumn’s throat as she awoke. Awoke back into the nightmare of the real. Back to fear, pain, and a dreadful ringing in her ears. Her face felt hot and wet. After wiping her eyes clear, Autumn glanced down at her hands and saw they were coated crimson.

Confused and afraid, Autumn glanced around.

Their foe was gone. Well, to be more specific, he was everywhere. Upon uttering the unfortunate words in every language and beyond, he’d burst like an overfilled balloon, sending both himself and everyone else flying from the shockwave of unearned power.

Hazy with pain, Autumn tried to stand, only to frown in confusion as her legs failed to obey. Her eyes glanced down at her misbehaving limbs, but what she saw drew a shocked utterance from her lips before she could stop it.

“…oh.” She exclaimed.

A crystalline spike jutted out of her stomach, right where her spine should have been.

“This shouldn’t be there.” Autumn muttered in shock between wracking coughs of blood and phlegm.

Desperately, Autumn tried to free herself of her impalement upon the sharp crystal, but her struggling only amounted to little more than pain and lacerated hands. The blood upon her face impaired her vision as she glanced around for help, but she could still make out the towering form of Bardos not too far away. With an outstretched hand, she pleaded with the berserker, “‘Cough’ Bardos…Help me.” But the lone berserker did not respond. He just stared at Autumn with unwavering orange eyes.

“Bardos…” she pleaded once more. “...help.”

He did not move.

And as her hazy eyes cleared, Autumn saw why. The explosion had driven back Bardos the same as Autumn into the sharp spears that surrounded them. However, unlike Autumn, the one that pierced him had driven straight through his heart, killing him in an instant.

His dead eyes stared out Autumn in judgment.

Confused, Autumn looked away. Her eyes roamed over the blasted clearing, skating over the gore and broken crystals until they settled onto Valérie’s back. The Lepus’ woman was hunched over the broken form of Rarg, holding onto his body tightly as she rocked back and forth, muttering a spring of nonsensical words under her breath all the while.

Struggling for breath, Autumn called out to her, but the Lepus woman didn’t hear, just kept rocking back and forth as she cradled Rarg in her arms.

“I wouldn’t bother.” A familiar voice called out, but it was twisted into an unfamiliar, cruel pattern of speech. Like a frog trying to die. “There’s nothing behind those pretty eyes anymore.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Footsteps sounded in the dark.

“One would have thought Witch Augus’...” she hissed the name, “…pretty little apprentice would have known how to shield her mind from pests like that lion-headed one, but I guess she’s not as good a teacher as she is a nuisance, huh? Hehehehe”

The cackling laughter of one who’d never known genuine humor erupted into the cavern. It was awful and grotesque, even covered as it was by a pretty voice. A threat to the senses. Foul and unholy.

Striding out of the gloam behind the cackle came a frighteningly familiar feminine form.

That of Leshana.

“You?!” Autumn croaked out as the ‘Elf’ stopped beside Valérie. A slim and once kind hand came down gently upon the bunny-folk’s crown. Valérie didn’t seem to notice, she just kept rocking back and forth while muttering unintelligible things. It was almost like the thing in Leshana’s skin was petting her.

‘Leshana’ grinned at Autumn. “Me!” she said and squeezed.

Valérie’s lifeless and now headless body crumpled to the ground.

“But…I thought.” Autumn croaked out between hacking coughs.

“You thought?” ‘Leshana’ mocked. “Did you perhaps mean that poor little Inferni welp? What was her name? Ah, who cares.” ‘Leshana’ snapped her fingers and Yuupis stepped into Autumn’s sight. “Oh, this one, right? Corpse Puppet is quite the useful spell, dontcha know? It keeps nosy little witches focused right where I want them. If you thought your little ‘sight’ was going to help you, then you’re more foolish than I’d wagered. I’m almost offended. Any half-rate hag fresh outta her swamp could sense it, screaming as you were, and craft a false shield against it.”

Snapping her fingers again, the body of Yuupis crumpled to the ground. ‘Leshana’ stared at it disinterestedly, like a child with a broken toy they were done with.

“Poor girl. She drowned, you know? Oh, how she struggled with my hands around her delicate throat.” She licked her lips, the sight more than strange while she wore Leshana’s face.

“Not that it mattered in the end. You ruined all the fun things I had planned for you.”

‘Leshana’ stalked across the space towards Autumn, her eyes burning with a crazed hunger and anger.

“I had such a wonderful play all lined up for you.” Slender steel-like fingers latched onto Autumn’s face, forcing her to look up into a pair of burning, inhumane eyes. Yet, for some reason, she didn’t hurt her. Not any further than she already was, anyhow.

“First,” she hissed, “I’d pick off one or two of them, in perhaps a spectacularly, deliciously brutal fashion. Make you wonder: Oh, who can I trust?~,” She mocked her in a parody of Autumn’s own voice. “Then, oh then, I’d slowly, ever so slowly, kill the rest! Do it one by one until you couldn’t take it anymore. I even had this to stoke the suspicions.”

Letting go of Autumn, she withdrew from her bag Autumn’s wand. Witch Augus’ wand.

“Imagine my surprise when I saw this old thing floating down my river. I haven’t seen this in so very long. Figures that old bitch would’ve discarded it with the rest of her trash.” she gestured dismissively to Autumn and her hat. “What would you have done? I wonder. If you’d found it amongst their belongings, hmm? Well, it doesn't matter now.”

The thing in Leshana’s skin held Autumn’s wand between two foul hands and bent it with a grin, relishing the look of horror on Autumn’s bloodied face. The wand bent and bent until finally…it broke.

A howl of magical agony erupted in the space as the wand snapped in two. With a decidedly cruel disregard, she chucked the shattered pieces away like they were no more than trash in her eyes.

The sound of them clattering rang in Autumn’s mind.

“Where was I? Oh, yes, the climax. With all your suspicion and fury, I’d guide you into ‘murdering’ the poor Inferni girl. Oh, you’d feel all righteous about it as your kind always do, but then I’d reveal myself and unveil you for the monster you are. Just the same as you like to call me and my kind. It’d have been…delectable.” She shuddered, a look of euphoria ghosted over her stolen elven features. However, it soon morphed into a rictus of rage.

“But then you had to go and RUIN IT!!!”

Spittle flew as she yelled in Autumn’s face, grasping tight to Autumn’s jaw once more. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to clench tight and rip Autumn’s jaw clean off, but she held off, belayed by some whispering thought of reason flickering behind her eyes of wrath.

“No.” she muttered. “A little shit like you isn’t worth the trouble of those two.”

Autumn gurgled as she was let go.

‘Leshana’ looked down disdainfully at Autumn’s stomach and the spike longed within.

“Oh, right. That.” She tutted. “This was all your fault, you know. Nothing I could or couldn’t have done to prevent you from blowing your fool self up. Right?” She asked the surrounding void, a rare look of caution overtaking her features. “Who was I to know the fool girl had too much in her mind that those pests would go pop like that?”

When nothing responded she calmed.

Autumn gurgled. She was drowning in her own blood and her eyes were getting rather heavy. The sound of a gentle river swayed into and out of her hearing and a lone ferryman raised his head to meet her. The one friend she truly had.

He shook his head sadly.

“Oh no you don’t!” A shock rocked through Autumn's body, forcing her awake and coughing out a lung full of blood. “I ain’t done witcha yet.”

All Autumn saw now was a foul grin. Living, she felt, would not be a fun outcome.

Autumn spat out the rest of the blood in her throat. “Where’s…’cough’...where’s Leshana. The real Leshana.”

The fake grinned.

“Where do you think I got this skin?”

Reaching up, she grasped her onto her grinning face and tore; the skin coming away like taffy. Below it was a nightmare. Like a spider emerging from a cocoon that was far too small. She rose on twisted limbs and bulging muscles. The weight of her sinful hide had her hunching over on a crooked spine, supported by a pair of wolf-like legs and a pair of too-long arms of gangly flesh that cracked the ground as they landed upon it. And from behind a sackcloth hood stitched skin, a pair of ruinous eyes glared.

Out had come Finger Eater Mildred, and she was looking to play.

“Now,” she growled, her voice like a thousand rusty razor blades, “where was I?”