Monstrosity

Fred found himself feeling a twinge of sadness at this, remembering Astra's death. Her too? he thought.

Does it matter? it thought to itself. In the end, she is no better than any of the others. She will give in to the darkness or die, just like everyone else.

No, thought Fred to himself, marshalling up a burst of courage. The will to destroy felt too strong to deny, but he could not allow this noble and beautiful woman to die as Astra had.

You fool, would she love you if she realized what you had done? , the Fourth Shoggoth thought to itself. Fred felt an intense wave of shame hit him as he realized the full extent of what he'd done to Astra. He began to sob. The shame was too much to bear, so he sank back into the darkness. There was no shame in what he'd done, he thought. The will to destroy is a natural one, and soon nothing will be able to oppose it.

Exotica was a brave woman. She'd had to be. She'd been a member of the Royal Family in the time when the troops of the alliance of tyrant war-chiefs that had called itself the Reik Tetriloni had fought a war with the nations of Havnheim, and everyone feared the day that their troops would overrun the Great Kingdom's capital of Camelyn itself. Like everyone else in the King's household, male or female, down to the lowliest servant, she'd received training in arms. She had also received considerable training in military strategy. In fact, the king had made an especial point of training her. He had also trained her in other masculine pursuits like hunting, while not neglecting feminine ones, as little as those interested her. At one point, when the war had been going particularly badly for Allaria and its allies, she had been out hunting with her father and asked him why they were enjoying themselves while people were fighting and dying elsewhere. He'd told her that they'd needed to remember that there was more to life than death and destruction and loss.

When she'd been taken to a battlefield a few months later, she saw why. She had been 17 at the time. The King had told her it was necessary for her to understand the what her subjects were going through and what she would have to face when she became queen of the realm. She'd thought she'd known what a battle would be like, as she'd had no small amount of knowledge of military strategy by that point, but there was a world of difference between the clean diagrams of battles she'd studied and the terrifying reality. She'd smelled the rotting corpses and heard the screams of pain. It had haunted her the rest of her life, although she understood that she had needed to see it. She now understood that you should never make war lightly, and learned to respect those who fought it. She had thought, had hoped, that she'd never see anything more terrible than this in her life.

But now she had. The all-pervasive stench of death and decay was even worse here. The warped former chambermaid screamed at her and lashed out with an arm that now more resembled a tentacle. At first, Exotica was too stunned by the revulsion and despair she felt to do anything. She could never have imagined the depth of hatred she'd seen in the chambermaid's eyes. Then, she lashed out at the chambermaid with her torch, answering hatred for hatred. The chambermaid screamed and pulled her tentacle-arm back, then lashing out again. Exotica fell on the wet, writhing floor. She leaped up with an agility that surprised her and slammed her torch into the shambling monstrosity, delighting in its screams of pain...

"No!" she screamed, dropping the torch. She saw now that it had turned into a rotting tentacle itself, and her arms were now covered with boils, although they were slowly fading away. The terrible darkness had almost dragged her under. She closed her eyes and tried to find the part of herself where the hidden words had been. She realized that the creature was human and that her only hope was to let go of hatred and try to have charity toward it, even though it had become a monster. She closed her eyes, searching for the words, and spoke some without fully understanding them...

1. The chambermaid turned back into a human being.
2. Exotica found herself in the throne room.
3. Nothing appeared to happen.

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