The Big Meow

And then It took the bait. It started pouring itself into sa’Rraah, and into Rhiow. As it began to manifest within them, the Outside One took the nature of matter to it, and wrapped that matter around itself, and started to become a physical thing inside the world.

Rhiow was now beyond any further reaction except a silent scream of pain and horror that bid fair to last forever. She had been afraid that sa’Rraah might not set her free again after their ploy succeeded, or at least allow her the mercy of death. Now she realized that sa’Rraah was screaming too, screaming along with Rhiow at a violation She found as horrifying as Rhiow had found the earlier one. She began to wonder whether even the Lone One had miscalculated, had overestimated her ability to beguile this force of unnature. Will we be trapped together like this forever? Or just cast aside and destroyed, both of us, when It’s got what It wants and we’re not needed any more —

There was no seeing anything in such a state; perception was all that was left, and even sa’Rraah’s perception was blurred by pain and terror now. But Rhiow knew that outside them, above them, the newly incarnated Outside One was taking on a shape like the Lone One’s, like Rhiow’s, but even huger and more terrible. The Black Leopard — Tepeyollotl no more Its mere avatar, but now truly containing its progenitor from Outside — loomed over Los Angeles, its great, hating, hungry eyes looking down at Earth, and beyond it, at the rest of Earth’s universe and all the worlds beyond, straight across the khiliocosm.

Everything cowered. Right across the planet, right across the worlds, the structure of space and the fabric of time themselves crouched down low in the darkness and looked up into it fearfully, hearing the long slow snarl of the Hunter as it bent low over them, about to open the jaws of its great yawning maw to snap them up at last and swallow them down into the dark.

But down on the terrace outside the Observatory, one patch of light remained, flowing to it from away westward in a narrow corridor where another dimension’s landscape still obtained, even under that world-ending regard. The substance and will of the World Serpent were sunk deep into that corridor of power. And though his body between Earth and the Old Downside was pulled unbearably taut, Ith’s radiant upper coils were cast around the whole fabric of the Observatory, anchoring and his jaws locked around the next coil down as his eyes blazed with an ebony fire of certainty and rage. I – shall not – be moved –!

Rhiow and sa’Rraah could feel Ith bunching every muscle to resist the abolishing power of the great hating eyes that hung in the heavens, all the length of his body rigid with the inconceivable strain of holding a world in place. Now – would be a good time! he said silently to Rhiow.

Not yet! sa’Rraah cried. It’s not finished becoming physical yet! Just a little more –

Yet the shattering that Tepeyollotl most desired, the precursor of the worse destruction to follow, was already beginning. Rhiow could hear it starting at the roots of things — a tremor in the earth that would build and build until all the land shattered and was overturned, until all the seas ran into the cracks and boiled away in the mantle-deep cracks that would burst open right across the planet. That shattering wave would run straight away from here through space and time, breaking everything it met, shattering it right down to the atoms; and even the particles of dust that remained would themselves be swallowed up into the fissures that would open in space’s own structure. In time those too would close, and there would simply be nothing… nothing but the Outside One, now Inside forever, Deity by default of a dead and empty cosmos.

Against that, though, Ith still strove. And Helen kept singing to the West as if the Old Downside was a frightened animal. “Sky Serpent, ’Alchup’osh,” she was singing, “once more give the children the gift you once gave them – “

The shaking didn’t stop, but at least it didn’t get any worse. It’s all that can be done right now! sa’Rraah said silently to Rhiow, though She too was writhing in anguish. No active attack until It’s all here, until the connection can’t be broken –

How much longer? Rhiow cried.

The earth under the Observatory rocked. Ith hung on, but Rhiow could feel the strain, feel him starting to slip –

Suddenly the earthquake broke out in full force, a roar that began to scale up and up to the point where nothing else could be heard, not even one’s own thoughts. In the sky over Los Angeles, the Leopard went jet-black and real, and Its eyes poured out a light that was itself destruction as that final roar of triumph and hatred rang out and filled the whole physical universe.

Now, something whispered in Rhiow’s ear: to her surprise, not sa’Rraah. And something Person-shaped and burning white went past her like lightning, and caught Tepeyollotl by the throat, knocking it onto the floor of Creation.