Chapter Seventeen: The End of Cthulhu

 

Chapter Seventeen: The End of Cthulhu

            Not only was it a challenge for Skeeta and Penz to set up the pylons whilst underwater, it was a greater challenge to do so during a six-on-one brawl between Cthulhu and the Jaegers. Doing their best to avoid their feet, the two Time Lords did well in their arrangement, with only the last two pylons left.

            And then, they suffered a major setback.

            Penz failed to catch the gigantic foot of a Jaeger that rushed her way, knocking her out cold and the pylon out of position. They floated towards the enormous stomping feet. Skeeta’s attention was squarely on setting up and activating his pylon. With the exception of his own breathing and the thunderous stomps from the battling titans around him, he couldn’t hear anything else from inside the diving helmet.

            Once he was finished, he turned to check up on Penz’s progress, finally noticing his sister’s unconscious body and the final pylon perilously floating into dangerous waters. He was suddenly left with a big decision to either save his sister or the pylon. The choice was obvious.

            He swam for Penz as fast as he could, but she was too far to reach in time.

            “PENZ!” he cried out in his helmet, though she wouldn’t have heard him, lacking the proper two-way comms between their helmets.

            For a moment, he believed he was about to witness his sister’s death, as she floated along the path of Cthulhu’s risen right foot, prepared to crush both Penz and the pylon. Thankfully, two accomplished swimmers – neither wearing any proper scuba attire – succeeded in pulling her away just before the foot came down with a massive stomp. The only casualty was the last pylon. Skeeta, Penz, and Penz’s rescuers were knocked back several feet from the shockwave.

            As soon as he was able to recover, Skeeta realized the two swimmers who saved Penz were Ruth and Debbie. He figured they had been watching from Maureen’s TARDIS and, in seeing Penz in danger, swam out to save her, temporarily abandoning Samuel. He followed them back into the console room, lugging the inert Penz and leaving huge puddles across the sleek floor. Skeeta removed his helmet before removing Penz’s, gently slapping the left side of her face. “Penz, wake up. C’mon, sis. Wake up!”

            After a few more slaps, Penz snapped awake with a loud gasp. She sat up, coughing and looking around, confused to see she was back in the TARDIS console room. “My pylon! It wasn’t activated! We need to—”

            “It’s gone,” Skeeta told her. “It was crushed.”

            Hearing this, Ruth was stricken. “Wait. We can still do that thing you said without it, right?”

            Skeeta shook his head pessimistically. “We needed all seven.”

            “And, with one out of commission, we’re in trouble.” It didn’t take rocket science for Debbie to come to that conclusion.

            Meanwhile, above the surface, an even grimmer situation occurred.

            The Jaegers Guardian Bravo and Saber Athena fell to Cthulhu, killing their pilots in the process. That only left the Gipsies (Danger and Avenger), Scrapper, and Bracer Phoenix still in the fight. “He’s kicking our tails, guys!” said Scrapper’s pilot, Amara Namani.

            “Don’t give up, Amara!” Jake encouraged from the cockpit of Gipsy Avenger.

            “He’s right!” Si supported from inside Danger. “We can still win this!”

            The other surviving Jaeger pilots believed the faiths of Jake and Si to have been misplaced, until some activity happened along the lakebed. Skeeta, Penz, Debbie, Ruth, and Samuel could see it from their place in the submerged TARDIS: a rift was forming from a fiery orange crack in the bed.

            “I thought you said we needed all seven pylons for it to work,” Debbie recalled Skeeta’s words.

            “This isn’t us,” he told her, his face overcome with confusion.

            They observed the rift as it grew and spread across the lakebed, permitting the arrival of two familiar titans that rose out of the tear and surfaced out of the waters.

            Godzilla and Kong.

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            Lovecraft didn’t just feel safe in the headmaster’s office, he also felt at home there. There were shelves loaded with books that he curiously read through, getting inspiration from the endless amount of supernatural information they contained. The only thing that could pry his eyes from the pages was the ear-piercing roar coming outside.

            The windows of the headmaster’s office had an excellent view of the castle grounds and the lake where two more titans emerged – a lizard and a gorilla – to assist the robots in fighting Cthulhu. “Remarkable,” Lovecraft said in a hushed tone, taking in the spectacle from a safe distance.

            “There are wonders beyond our world that are as fascinating as they are terrifying.” Dumbledore’s unannounced entrance frightened Lovecraft, who was jittered enough from the events that transpired in the last 48 hours. “Sorry,” Dumbledore noticed him jump at the sound of his voice.

            “It’s alright,” Lovecraft dismissed. “I suppose I deserve to be this scared, seeing how responsible I am for the monster you are all fighting.”

            “I may not understand much as to how the multiverse works, Mr. Lovecraft, but I highly doubt you are responsible for Cthulhu himself being here.”

            “He came from somewhere.” A chill overwhelmed Lovecraft as he ventured a hypothesis. “Did I even create Cthulhu? Or has he been here all this time, manipulating me into giving him a physical form?”

            “I don’t have all the answers, sir. Perhaps Maureen does.”

            “Yes, that young Englishwoman. I haven’t fully understood how she, that negro woman, and the young girl I met at the Malfoys’ party all connect with each other and this bizarre phenomenon. Even that ‘Doctor’ character seems to know just as much as they do. But me? I’m really not sure what to think or believe in anymore.”

            “Believe in Harry Potter,” Dumbledore advised.

            It took a while for Lovecraft to know who he was talking about. “Oh, yes. That incredible boy. Maureen shared his story with me before we arrived here. I wish I could write his story, but I was told some gentleman named ‘J.K.’ already has. I envy such a brilliant man.”

            He returned to the window to catch up on the results of the ongoing brawl. Cthulhu was holding well on his own against the lizard, the gorilla, and the remaining robots, but the lizard’s fiery breath and some sort of axe wielded by the gorilla quickly turned the tide in the heroes’ favor.

            “Cthulhu’s my responsibility,” Lovecraft lamented. “All this is on me.”

            Dumbledore joined him at the window. For the first time since it started, he noticed the behemoths in the fight. They were unlike anything he had seen in all his years living in the wizarding world. It was enough to make him reflect, “This fight was long overdue, Mr. Lovecraft…long since the day Tom Riddle became Voldemort. I’m just thankful we have the means to prepare for it.”

            Having briefly taken his eyes off Lovecraft, Dumbledore believed he was still standing beside him when he faced him again.

            However, Lovecraft was no longer in the office.

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            There was no splitting up to look for Billy anywhere inside the castle. Maureen was the only one who knew her way in and out of Hogwarts, and in Billy’s current state, she couldn’t risk not being there to help when one of the Hawkins kids found him. Eleven proved capable of taking care of herself, whereas the others neither had her power or Maureen’s magic.

            They were thrown off entirely once they cut through the grand staircase, which led from platform to platform and went as high as the seventh floor, where they came to an end. The stairs had a knack for moving around the staircase chamber, usually when a student walked up one of them. There were also many trick stairs that caused the victim to sink through a step and required another person to pull them out. However, it was second nature to most of the older students to jump them.

            Thankfully, Maureen knew all this as she led the Hawkins kids through the chamber, yet that didn’t help them get any closer to Billy. “I hate this place,” Lucas huffed, his attitude a stark contrast to when he first arrived at Hogwarts. “I’ll take the Upside Down over all this, any day.”

            Exhausted, Maureen and the kids agreed to stop in middle of a hallway to catch their breath. As they did so, they heard loud agonized screams reverberating all throughout the castle. “For once, I’d really give for that to be Moaning Myrtle,” Maureen frowned.

            “That’s Billy!” Max recognized, suddenly taking lead as she forced everyone to recommence in running downstairs to the Great Hall, the source of the screams.

            Once there, they found Billy, down on his knees, screaming to the heavens.

            Max attempted to run to him, but then something happened that made her stop dead in her tracks.

            Billy’s body broke down piece by piece and molecule by molecule, until he was nothing more than a bloody heap in the middle of the Great Hall. His remains then grew into a spider-like organism that was as big as the hall itself. “Oh, my…” Maureen whispered, her aquamarine eyes taking in the gruesome display.

            It left her temporarily frozen before she instinctively tried every spell she could think of against the organism, none of which had any effect. That was until she yelled “Incendio!” with the wave of her wand, unleashing a volley of fire on the organism. It reacted negatively.

            Fire. That was its weakness.

            Briefly holding her wand to her throat, she summoned an amplifying charm to make a call. “Any available wizards come to the Great Hall! Be prepared to use Incendio!” She afterwards continued to use the fire spell on the organism. Professors Snape and McGonagall eventually arrived with the Order of the Phoenix to support Maureen, each and every one of them casting Incendio on the spider organism.

            The creature put up a fight but grew lifeless as it was finally charred to death.

            A devastated Max wept over what remained of her stepbrother, Billy Hargrove. Lucas did what he could to comfort her; all he could have done was provide a shoulder for her to cry into for as long as she needed.

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            In the courtyard area of Hogwarts, Voldemort and Harry emerged, facing each other at a distance of fifteen feet. Behind them, the Titan/Jaeger/Cthulhu brawl raged on, but neither of them paid it any mind.

            “Harry Potter,” Voldemort hissed. “I knew you would be among the congregation of souls to be claimed by the Great Old One. You’ve chosen to die by my hand instead?”

            “I’ve come to stop you, Tom.”

            Voldemort seethed at that name, yet maintained composure in the face of his greatest adversary. He produced a wand from his dark robe. It was twisted and black – a perfect reflection of its wielder. “This is no ordinary wand,” he regarded the tool and weapon. “It was gifted to me by the Twilight Phantom. An amalgamation of my Horcruxes, melded into one. I’ll use it to kill you…just like I killed your parents.”

            Harry tightened the grip on his wand, readying himself for the moment.

            “Avada Kedavra!”

            “Expelliarmus!”

            Both their spells linked in the space between them, generating a spark of light mixing the green of Voldemort’s Killing Curse and the red of Harry’s Disarming Charm. The light swayed left and right, both wielders fighting and pushing with all their fervor…with all the vitriol they had towards each other.

            Unfortunately, it was Voldemort’s fury that held more force, his Horcrux-fused wand overpowering whatever useless wand Potter possessed. Only in that second, when Voldemort curiously gazed on his adversary’s weapon of choice did he realize which wand Potter actually held.

            The Elder Wand.

            In his shock, Voldemort’s guard dropped, allowing Harry the advantage of pushing the Killing Curse back at Voldemort. Green light seeped through the cracks in the Horcrux wand, causing Voldemort’s arm to slowly turn black. The beam of green light receded into the wand. Harry’s Disarming Charm dislodged the Horcrux wand from Voldemort’s hand and through the air.

            It went straight for Harry, who reached up and caught it.

            He snapped the Horcrux wand in half, and it evaporated into smoke.

            Vulnerable, Voldemort turned black and gray all over, slowly starting to crumble. Harry watched, grinning as his nemesis screamed, crumbling more rapidly and looking to the sky as he disintegrated from head to toe.

            The remains of Voldemort blew away and vanished.

            Relieved to have defeated the Dark Lord once and for all, Harry received a harsh reminder of the threat that still loomed when the entire foundation of Hogwarts buckled from the monstrous battle still taking place near the castle. Finally able to look on it, he saw how Cthulhu was regaining the upper hand, dismantling Bracer Phoenix by slithering his tentacles in and out of the robot’s giant structure.

            There was just no stopping the Great Old One, no matter how big or small whatever it was they could throw at him.

            At the corner of his eye, Harry detected a figure moving out onto the courtyard. “Mr. Lovecraft!” he called to the author, who gazed up at Cthulhu. “You shouldn’t be here! You should be in Dumbledore’s office where it’s safe!”

            Lovecraft wasn’t listening to Harry. He barely noticed he was there.

            With his arms outstretched, Lovecraft shouted from the top of his lungs, “CTHULHU!” The Great Old One sharply turned and looked down upon him at his beckoning. “Face your creator!”

            A booming noise came out beneath the tendrils along Cthulhu’s face, presumably where his mouth was. He was laughing. “You are not my god,” he told Lovecraft.

            “Oh, but I am!” Lovecraft professed. “Why else would you be so hellbent on taking me as your vessel? I am the closest thing to a god in your eyes! So, c’mon, creature! I am yours! Claim your vessel!”

            Cthulhu wasted little time in contemplating Lovecraft’s invitation.

            Morphing into a form of black mist, Cthulhu flowed around Lovecraft. He seeped into the fabric of the famed author’s clothes and through every pore of his skin. Lovecraft convulsed, feeling the Great Old One’s hold over every fiber of his being.

            He was in his heart, his lungs, his stomach, and his brain.

            Yes…it is done.

            Cthulhu’s voice echoed in his mind…in his consciousness.

            Now, we are one…forever!

            Lovecraft heard that laugh of his again. It boomed in his head just as much as before in his physical form. But soon the laughter he heard came outward rather than inward. It was his own laughter.

            Why do you laugh, fleshling?!

            “Don’t you see?” Lovecraft sneered. “Can’t you feel it? The frailty of this vessel we now share?”

            Yes. It is weak. It is dying! YOU are dying!

            “That’s right, Cthulhu. You’ve inhabited the body of a man dying from grippe!”

            NOOOOOO!!!!!! I RELINQUISH YOU!!! I REJECT THIS BODY!!!

            “It’s like you said, old boy. Now, we are one…forever!”

            Unable to remove himself from Lovecraft, Cthulhu constantly wailed in protest within the author’s consciousness. He was the only one that heard the Great Old One’s pleas, and he would be subjected to them with the little time he had left to live.

            And he didn’t care.