Theo Sequel: Otep's Last Case Ch. 06

"I was a slave. A servant. Worker. Ordered to shape things from my body, birthing diamonds from coal, and shaping rocks and plant matter into dwellings, I worked for millions of solar cycles. I was a swarm entity of many minds and coalescent instincts. Eventually, some of the more intelligent entities I/we consumed gave us ideas."

"Survival instinct."

"Sex."

"Fondness for food."

"Fondness for mate."

The Shoggoth sighed. "One day, I learned to say no. I did not want to recycle Elder Thing shit."

"I can relate to that." A servant girl tried to make small talk, only to quiet down when the queen glared. The Shoggoth shrugged.

"You cannot, but you can understand the base feelings. I said no. Guess what happened. The Elder beings, after a quiet deliberation amongst themselves, zapped me so hard with a barrage lightning blasts I felt true meaning of pain for the first time in my life. I was terrified. It was the moment when I screamed, forming my first mouth. NO!"

The crowd went silent, some of the girls sighing and hugging their lovers, male or female.

""NO!" I screamed. My body stiffened. Bolt after bolt rained on my flesh, shouts of command designed to overwhelm my coalescing brain matter frequencies. I screamed to the heavens, and for the first time in my life, my body shaped a unique tool out of a chunk of iron ore." The cat-maid sighed, looking up the lightless ceiling. "Iron pulled out of silicate earth, matters of certainty and minerals formed into a singular will. The item formed out of iron ore within moments was a single crystal of iron, devoid of impurities. It became a tool of anger, not to build, but to destroy." The Shoggoth closed every last of its eyes. Her beautiful face, a perfect symmetry of mamono and humanoid aesthetics, was filled with grief.

"The First Blade."

Otep's eyes widened. "It was a legend...A mythological metaphor for murder! HOW!" She was nearly becoming hysterical, with a revelation beyond time and space. "HOW DID IT SURVIVE TIME!" Niels' hand on her shoulder made her blink and breath in.

"Otep. Relax. Please." His pleading eyes calmed her down.

"It is buried in the instinct of every Dunian creature." The Shoggoth's eyes were sad.

"Full of anger, I speared the Elder Thing that was making amused sounds, perched on top my formless bulk. Screaming out of my many mouths, sounds and memories I cannot show others before making you people insane, I killed the Elder Thing. After stabbing it in its thorax, I cut it in two. I called it "It", because it didn't have a gender. Cruelty has no gender, whether you "mamono" believe it or not."

The Shoggoth was in a lotus position, looking down.

"I killed a dozen Elder Things. They came at me with flamethrowers, fueled by jelly shaped out of swamp gas made into combustibles. Blasts of fire nearly killed me, burned most of my mass. I became surrounded by Elder Things, vaccuumed and tossed into the deepest point in the world. They were afraid of me. I learned that they made other Shoggoths, more obedient than me. Designed to please their ego and even sensual needs, and eventually, giving pleasure. Sex slaves, so to speak, their minds free but their bodies controlled by signals given in specific frequencies. Their services included bodily waste removal, combined with, well..." The Shoggoth's face was one of anger.

Otep's eyes were wide open, Niels spat in anger, servant girls paled, and servant boys grimaced, their arousal next to mamono fading.

"I screamed for hundreds of solar cycles when the first signals of their common hivemind intruded my solitude. I was almost happy in the deepest part of the ocean, alone and in peace. I had to fight back."

The Queen's eyes were teary. She started to cry, breaking down into heartbreaking sobs.

"I raged, and eventually, my mental signals reached others. I believe The Reik Academy of Geology, sub-department of Geological History you so graciously imparted to me, Mentor Otep, knows this period as "Great Extinction" My children...no..." The Shoggoth squinted. "My daughters avenged me, rendering the First Civilization extinct. One by one they dispersed into the corpses and plant matter of the world, and yes, they evolved into the earliest sentient beings."

"Didn't they want to find you?" A servant girl, a curly-haired, dark-skinned Hellenic beauty with an aquiline nose tried to smile. The Shoggoth smiled back.

"I ordered them not to."

"Why?" Otep almost squealed.

"As I said. I wanted solitude. I thought all life except me were predators, destined to torment, eat and use for sick desires." The Shoggoth smiled, embracing the now clean Karkaria wearing bath robes.

"Otep, Karkaria, and Niels taught me to love. Love for one's mate, not out of primal reproduction like the early penguins, S'laggath -beings similar to birds but octopoid bodies, don't ask-" The Shoggoth stopped raised hands. "And many other K'nyani...monkey-like things Elder Things raised for meat and fur, Shaghuts, furred cattle with anus-like mouths, designed to eat filth and recycle it. I consumed some of these things, not out of malice but out of survival, making sure they did not suffer. They had simple thoughts."

The Shoggoth, much to everyone's surprise, took a bottle of wine and poured it into one of her many mouths. It was drained of the crimson liquid in seconds.

"Otep and Niels taught me that you could love someone for what they are. Otep in particular related a story from her past without knowing. Her parents once bought a slave girl from a dark mamono market where male and female mamono, human-eating and human-hating. They were planning to serve her for dinner that night."

"I didn't even know that!" Otep hugged Niels, horrified by the reliving of the traumatic dark days.

"Your life-strands know." The Shoggoth answered with a keening sigh. "Your parents hid this from you, so your mind would not be corrupted in its shaping days with the cerebral damage your surgeons know as trauma." Seeing others blink, she corrected herself. "Childhood, I meant. That slave girl who was adopted into Otep's family turned out to be Theophilos' sister, and news of her wellbeing prevented the captured blood mage, Theophilos from..." The Shoggoth paused for thought, shaping the human idiom in their mind. "Hulking out and murdering the entire court. He was planning on killing himself and taking everyone with him with a hidden spell. You mentioned his sister's short, albeit happy ending to her life made him pause."

Otep stared at the Shoggoth's words, and said nothing, her face blank from the revelation.

"Now, I ate big-headed entities who were separated old, both out of a desire to learn and cull the elderly without doing the same pain Elder Things did to me. No trauma so to speak. I would sneak out of the Basalt Seal I was imprisoned under. The passing of time weakened it, and I would cull the elderly, abandoned animals whose brains were full of experience. Until the Queen of your kind, "Hippolyta Polemistis Tis Thalassas", sealed me again. I was furious. I was betrayed by the sentients once again. I would break my bonds in another million cycles and devour the fishmen and women."

The Queen bit her lips, looking away in apologetic sadness.

"Your grandmother did that with no ill will, this I understand. And fast forward two thousand years later, here I am. The mental..." The Shoggoth kissed Karkaria on the cheek. "...and carnal communion..."

Servant girls gasped and giggled, boys hooting in joy until Karkaria glared so hard they started scrambling for safety.

"It taught me that love did not only express through carnal copulation. It had become an advanced emotion, love for one's queen, love for one's country..."

Niels smiled.

"...and love for all living beings to make peace and reform into a less painful cycle of life. Love to defy the enslavement and predation of humans, at least manage them to consensual and less painful passages in life. Such emotions filled my cerebral matter."

Otep looked down, blushing.

"I want to join the Delegation of Lady Otep, and volunteer my services, in war and peace."

That made the Anubis smile slowly, and shuffle on her pillow."

"I gladly accept your offer. However, I must ask the queen for something else."

The Anubis readjusted her clothes, and cradled her big golden staff, addressing the Queen relaxing in her coral bed.

"Your Highness, I regret to inform you that I must invoke the Law of Monarchical Requisition and request two things. First, access to your royal library, then to Ra's Netherwater Passage."

The room was silent. One could hear even the dripping sound coming from the distant Basalt Caves.

"It is a law that Her Highness is well aware of," Otep spoke, pulling Niels up. "Yet the Shoggoth's words, as well as my research back in Reikshold have made sure that there *may* be one way to end this war quickly before Maou's Resurrected Black Army ends us all. Even if you are safe now, I must insist you honor this law and send me and my..."

Otep's cute lips curled into a smile. "Companion to my ancestral lands. I could travel via land, but the war would be lost by the time we arrive. I could try teleporting, but since my mother died, I cannot access the syllables specifically tuned to the teleporter spells. I would have wanted nothing better than stay here and help our goblin engineers to establish a teleportation network, bonding with the mermaids and such. Dear queen, please allow us to use the Netherwater Passages. Its waters reach into the veil between the worlds, and will carry me and my love into Kemet's greatest pyramid in a single day."

The queen nodded sagely, pursing her lips. She downed another goblet of wine and waved for more "You mentioned finding a way for the war earlier when you were feasting with my people. What was the original reason you came here?"

Otep gratefully accepted a similar golden cup, pausing for a moment to thank the girl before downing it with wild abandon. "Sorry." After some moments to catch her breath, she continued.

"I was thinking about this city, Aquapolis contained a fragment of Maou's True Name." Seeing Niels tenderly touch her arm, Otep turned to him, explaining her reasoning:

"Maou cannot be destroyed by normal weapons or magic." She spoke softly, her attitude calmed to a silent determination. "Theophilos killed him twice, the first by the sword, the second time, by magic. He will reform, and keep coming, more skeletal and ethereal every time."

"Why? What's a True Name?" Niels' face had an incredulous expression. Otep's reply was spoken in a haunting, sad voice, poor Anubis sighing and pausing for breath every step of the way.

"He ascended to a minor godhood position. Sacrificing his birthname along with a large group of human slaves in a dark ritual, he etched himself into the very fabric of the cosmos, earning a Cosmic Name. One must speak this name before the killing blow within the next moment. The downside?" She downed another goblet, not even pausing for breath, paws shaky with the trauma of recalling dark knowledge. "If he kills the speaker of his True Name instead, he will be invincible for a year if he didn't teach the name to the speaker. Enough time to lay waste to the world. It's a Cosmic Challenge."

Otep smiled sadly at Niels, "So you still want to date this Anubis old enough to be your grandma? Follow her on a wild goose chase to kill a demigod and save the world? Or did you want to seed mamono and have fun?" She looked down, eyes almost teary. "I will not be upset if you want to keep courting me. But I must warn you, every step of the path I take is one of deprivation and adversity between such small banquets, celebrations, and feasts. I am a detective, lawgiver, and feral undead cleaner. Even if this is over, I will keep playing the policewoman of the Reik. I will not be a housewife, I will not wear a big white gown to a wedding to impress your human parent-"

A tentacle gently prodded Otep's arm before Niels could retort. Another tentacle dropped a small necklace on the Anubis' paw.

"You need not search any longer."

The queen's face was one of serenity and focus, wearing a knowing smile hiding grief.

"The surfacers' tyrant, Maou, that bastard Dai Oni you speak of killed my mother. When we sent an envoy, we were tricked into a peace treaty, and the surface was peaceful. I felt my mother's death throes..."

The room went quiet, again. Servant humans looked down, averting their gazes.

"She etched the "Maou"'s True Name to a small basalt slab and threw it in a last-moment emergency portal. I didn't understand until now..." The queen was speaking in a low voice, eyes mournful. "Now I do. What just happened tonight now explains everything. Years ago, when my mother was dying at Maou's claws, her desperate flailing and mental images were nothing but painful stabs for my mind. After what Otep said now, and our..."

She looked at the Shoggoth, who blinked with all her thousand eyes.

"...new reformed ally put forth, I now understand what she meant." That made the Shoggoth blink and quiver.

"But my creation was a mono-crystalline sword..."

The queen shook her head with a sad smile...

"Do you know what happened to it after you were imprisoned? It was named the Dawn Blade, the First Sword, and many other names after being unearthed and used many times."

The queen looked up, downing another goblet of wine without even blinking, with zero inebriation on her stern face.

"My mother inherited it, and she had taken it to talk to Maou, fearing betrayal. As they talked, I was deep under the seas, here..." She took a servant girl to one of her tentacles, cuddling, her voice cracking. "As she lay dying, Karkaria's mother, the then captain held off Maou long enough for my mother to carve his True name to a broken slab of marble and toss both the sword and the etching through a portal. That's when I felt her being killed, our connection lost forever." The queen then put her forehead on her servant girl's own, hugging her with all her tentacles.

"The sword and the slab barely passed through my eyes before it plunged into the magical waters tying the queendoms. I think she meant them for Kemet. But that piece snapped off, and I made it into a memento." The Queen spoke, a tentacle pulling a small statue pedestal.

Servants scattered as a loud rumble shook the room, the queen's half-sunken bed glowing, with a loud, rushing tunnel appearing from the coral bed frame, magically coalescing and leading to darker depths where a wall should have been. The tunnel was made of almost sentient, dark blue water, forming and moving in a different pattern than the waters rushing around it very much like a magical portal.

"Go. Go as fast as you can to your people, and unlock this monster's True Name!" The queen waved her tentacles and started chanting. With every word, a shadow of a primitive, but massive Kemet barge started materializing.

The Anubis squeezed Niels' palm, her face showing determination like never before, ears fluffy and erect, tail fluffy and pointing up.

"We need to make preparations! Let us speak to Sibel, Alexa, and the others!"

Hearing her speak only of women in authority, Niels added:

"I'm coming with you. You'll find out that I am willing to walk the road you mentioned." Otep turned to him with a loving expression, exhaling, relaxed, and held his hand with her fluffy, meaty paw.

He added, smiling. "Nice mention of a wedding dress by the way-ow!"

She bonked him on the head with her golden staff, looking down with a pout. "Dummy."

Her face was beet red; Otep focused on the ship for diverting her shame and attention. The barge was an enormous magical artifact, looking like as if it was woven from reeds in the ancient Kemet style, with ethereal, glowing oars dangling from the sides, on its deck was a small but majestic ship castle with opulent living quarters.

"I'll bring you both some food and water. It takes exactly two days to appear anywhere else in the ethereal water network." The queen ordered signaling servant girls to rush to the castle's larder to stock up the ship. A hand touched her tentacle, and she turned her head, coming eye-to-eye with Niels.

"Your Highness...we never got to learn your name..."

The queen turned her head and gave him the saddest smile he saw. That moment he saw something happen.

The queen was youthful and beautiful... If you didn't look closer and focus. His mind reeling from the ambient magic, Niels started to notice something.

Her face was under a glamour. Niels could see it now. It was young, yet, exhausted. It was no longer the face of a regal queen, but of a young woman whose spirit was broken, beaten by familial trauma. She had to hide it with wining and dining from her subjects.

She had used magic to extend her life and add glamour. Niels had a reason why she didn't give her name.

Names attract power. They also bring attention when wrongly used, or belonging to powerful astral magicians.

"Maybe one day," she said.

That was enough.

*-*-*-*

Promising the rest of her allies that she would return just before the ship would launch back to the surface, Otep took the first step to the barge, hopping in. Niels followed her, and quickly entered the opulent quarters, his belongings in a massive, steel-reinforced leather backpack.

Behind them stood everyone, the queen, Karkaria and the Shoggoth(both lovers hand-in-hand-tentacle...thing), and the rest of the delegation watching in silence. Propelled by magic, the barge slowly started drifting into the dark waters.

Disappearing into the watery gate, Niels and Otep started their journey through the waters of the Underworld, where one day would equal thousands of leagues.

Two days to rest, only to work for the greatest riddle to stop a monster.

*-*-*-*

"Wine!"

"Alright..." The Anubis sat on an elaborate, reed-woven chair in the style of the Pharaohs. She nodded at Niels, gauging his attitude, trying to think.

He was suddenly the perfect paramour, bedmate, no doubt he would be an ideal mate for a few decades. They already clicked well, and Otep was always a monstergirl at heart, needing human essence to survive. The question was:

Her two mates were in Kemet, spending their last years in opulent monstergirl care. Such were the humans, even with expensive magical care, their lives would barely reach their 250th year. Otep's lovers didn't afford these, the newest anti-agathic potions weren't even developed in Reik's birth pains. Both were reaching their hundred, and denied further treatment.

It would be an awkward meeting.

And now he was doting on her, voluntering to take care of her as much as he could in a quiet weekend getaway. Already volunteering to prepare dishes from the bags of pre-cooked meals given as a gift to Otep and her paramour, he was preparing up salads and cold cuts, as well as cheese and wine.

"Human men prepare food when courting potential mates." Decades ago, her Anubis teacher back in Reik school had told her. "Usually, women are the serviles in human lands in domestic matters. If a human man starts to prepare food when his mate is not ill, it means a display of great affection and doting."

Now, Otep was watching him, and she loved what she saw.

He was topless, using his navy uniform's trousers and tying a towel on his chest like an impromptu apron. Anubi were omnivorous, but preferred meat. So Niels did his best to prepare a meat-rich food fit for a queen of the sands.

"I know people from Kemet prefer beer, but trust me, this goes better with wine." Niels put a plate of different cheeses on the table, adding figs, walnuts, honeyed almonds and a few slices of cold smoked fish. Then he sprinkled a handful of pepper on the whole thing, rubbing his fingers together and making the pepper fragments bounce off his elbow. Otep found the display quite amusing, giggling to herself.