Chapter 19.11

  Tara stood next to Raif at the bottom of the stairs as an unfathomably powerful malevolent presence approached. Slowly the being walked into the light at the furthest reaches of her vision.

  The being was tall and thin with long black hair. From its current distance, it was hard to be for certain, but the entity appeared to be wearing some sort of fancy black suit with a neck tie. Even at that distance she could make out three other features, unnaturally long claw-like fingers, bright green eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness, and a sickeningly wide smile that would give Heath Ledger's Joker a run for his money. If it weren't for the black hair and facial features, she would have mistook the figure for that old Creepypasta character Slender Man.

  She could hear muffled noises to her left that made her think Raif was saying something, but it sounded like she was hearing him from deep underwater. Her entire body shook, and her heart threatened to leap from either her chest or her throat (whichever one was more terrifying).

  If she had been able to look at her stats in her journal, she would have realized her Sanity points were taking a major hit. And since she was well versed in the Call of Cthulhu table top game, she would realize just how dangerous that was. She would have also had a much better grasp of the situation.

  Even though she knew her body was acting unnaturally, and she could tell this being was immensely powerful, she had no idea she was staring down one of the highest ranking deities in the Cthulhu Mythos. And even if she had, there was literally nothing she could do about it. Her body was frozen due to fear and the acute effects of the deity's miasma.

  All she could do was watch as the distance between her and impending death drew closer with every second.

  The sound of Raif to her side had stopped. Even their ability to talk had been silenced by the terrifying presence.

  The being opened its mouth to speak, but something impossibly fast appeared from behind it. It was some sort of blur that caused its attention to momentarily shift. In an instant, the thing that had been closing in on the malevolent presence's back leapt off the wall to its side and punched it in the face.

  Clay?!

  Tara couldn't understand why he was here. She couldn't grasp why Clay would attack the terrifying being instead of her and Raif. And on top of it all, how was he able to move and act like everything was normal with this oppressive energy?!

  "Oh, I like you."

  As the entity spoke, it quickly launched Clay far down the tunnel and followed after him. With each step, the effects of the being dissipated until finally...

  "What the hell are you doing, you idiot? Are you just going to wait for it to come back and kill us?" Raif yanked on her arm, pulling her up the stairs.

  "But..."

  "If you're even going to say 'But Clay,' I swear I'll make sure you regret it. Besides, that idiot's already dead. There's no way he'd survive that thing." He continued to pull on Tara as he did his best to ignore the fact that Clay's actions had saved them. Even if he hadn't intended to save Raif and Tara when he distracted that entity, he'd at least saved them inadvertently.

  "The door's locked, we can't even go this way." Tara reminded Raif as they were already halfway up the stairs.

  "You really don't have a functioning brain in that little head of yours, do you? Did you forget about my B&E ability? I can just spring us out of here." He grinned as he berated Tara, "You're so lucky I'm here to save you. Nobody else would even bother with someone as stupid and worthless as you."

  "But didn't..."

  "Shut up before I decide to leave you here! You tried to kill him. Get it through your thick skull that he wasn't playing a hero. Next time you see that loser, he will be trying to get revenge for what you did. So you'll need me around to keep you safe." They had reached the door at the top of the stairs.

  Tara opened her mouth to say something, but she realized Raif was right. There was no way Clay had intended to protect her after what she'd done. And if Clay ever got the chance, she was sure he wouldn't hesitate to hurt her or even worse. She deserved it.

  "Stop screwing around, I need to use my ability to save you." He extended his hand toward Tara, "B&E!"

  Raif disappeared immediately, but nothing happened to Tara.

  B&E has been cast on The Musician.

  Warning: B&E has failed. Infiltration was unsuccessful.

  She stared at the locked door between her and Raif. All he needed to do was unlock the door and she could escape the tunnel.

  Nothing happened.

  Tara pounded on the door, desperate to get Raif's attention.

  Why wasn't he opening the door?

  Her hands were raw and swollen from beating on the door by the time she stopped. Tara realized Raif wasn't even going to attempt to open it.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He'd left.

  She slumped with her back to the door. Tara curled up, wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them to her chest. She couldn't cry, the tears wouldn't come.

  Why couldn't she cry for Raif? She'd cried back in the room when apologizing to Clay... But she couldn't cry at the thought of losing the only person to ever love her? She was just like Raif always said, ungrateful.

  Her inner turmoil was interrupted by a tugging at her insides. Something had entered into this dimension somewhere down the tunnel.

  Perhaps she would be safe if she stayed hidden on the stairs. If Clay was already killed by that terrible being, then that left Joan to take on whatever had just appeared down the tunnel. Or was Joan still chained to her chair?

  Tara's heart ached the longer she remained in hiding on the stairs. It wasn't right. She had left Clay and Joan to die in that room. She'd run away when Clay faced off with that immensely powerful thing. Would she really hide while Joan faced off against some creature by herself?

  The sound of her boots echoed as she hurried across the damp earthen floor of the tunnel. She was walking as quickly as possible down the tunnel, hoping that she wouldn't be too late. If her legs would stop shaking so badly, she might have been able to run, but at this moment a brisk walk was all she could muster.

  She still hadn't found any evidence of Clay's body. It wasn't possible that he could have survived a clash with that powerful entity, right? But unless his body was taken from our dimension, or it evaporated, it became less and less likely that Clay was dead.

  What would they do when they see her? Would she have to fight them? Would she just let them do what they wanted to her, even if it meant killing her?

  Unsure of any of the answers to the questions running through her head, Tara suddenly found herself standing in front of a disturbing sight.

  "What... Happened here?" Her voice came out as a whisper. Not because she was trying to be quiet, but because the sight in front of her had knocked the wind out of her.

  Some sort of giant pile of gore took up most of the width of the tunnel. About twenty feet past the pile she could see the entrance to the door where she had left Clay and Joan to die. But she couldn't understand what she was looking at. It almost looked like an inside out version of the pictures of Dimensional Shamblers she'd seen in Call of Cthulhu art books and players guides. But if that was the case, she couldn't figure out what could have caused this much damage.

  Did Clay and Joan do that? Were the really that powerful? If it wasn't them, then who or what could have done that?

  Finding herself at a complete loss, she squeezed past the disgusting pile and continued down the tunnel toward the settlement.

  For the remainder of her walk down the tunnel, Tara did not see any signs of life, combat, or anything. All she saw was a tunnel that looked like every other inch of the tunnel she already walked through (minus the impossibly powerful creatures and piles of monster goop). The first thing she found that was different from the rest of the tunnel was the metal door at the end.

  It looked like one of those ship hatches with the big metal wheel on it. She spun the wheel, and pulled but the door refused to open. After a few more attempts, she tried to push it and found that it opened immediately.

  The other side of the door was cloaked in darkness aside from a few scattered lights. Even though her vision was limited, this new space was absolutely massive. She heard an incredibly loud crash far off in front of her, much further than her eyes could see in the darkness.

  She did her best to move quickly toward the sound. Without being able to see very far in front of her, she had to pay close attention to her surroundings as she hurried along. Unfortunately for her, Tara hadn't paid close enough attention and tripped over something on the ground. Tara fell flat on her face.

  Shaking off the pain from the fall, Tara rolled over onto her back and inspected the object that had caused her to trip. It seemed to be the body of some sort of large deformed dog.

  Was this one of the Tindalos Hounds that Clay had mentioned?

  If that was the case, Tara realized that she would definitely need to hurry. If there was one body, there were likely others. Clay and Joan might still be fighting for their lives.

  She found the collapsed building first, guessing that might have been the source of the noise she heard. However, Tara didn't spend much time focusing on the destruction because something far off at the edge of her vision caught her attention.

  A Tindalos Hound was stalking something just out of view. It might have been a trick of the light, but this Hound seemed much larger than the one she'd found on the ground.

  Tara quickly but quietly moved to get a better view of the situation while trying not to draw the beast's attention. Her heart nearly stopped as she finally saw what the Hound had been stalking.

  Clay!

  He had seen much better days. His body was covered in wounds. The fact Tara could see he had more than a couple broken bones from this distance did not bode well for how bad his condition actually was. She had to do something quickly, Clay was completely defenseless and Joan was nowhere to be seen.

  Tara quickly pulled out her journal and looked through her abilities. She found three that might work in this scenario, but there was a major drawback:

  Power Ballad

  Once per 10 minutes.

  Increase target's STR, CON, and POW by 1d10 for 2 minutes.

  Level 1

  Headbanger

  Passive.

  User's head is treated as a +50% affinity blunt weapon.

  User receives no recoil damage from use of head as a weapon.

  Level 1

  Those two were fairly straight forward and didn't have any issues, but the last one was a completely different story. She'd noticed it when she first checked out her abilities but never looked at it too closely because of the drawback.

  One Hit Wonder

  Once per combat.

  User automatically connects with a blunt damage attack to a single target.

  STR attack is equal to the highest STRx2 of any individual in combat.

  After attack, user is immobilized for remainder of combat.

  Level MAX

  It was the ultimate glass cannon technique, especially against a powerful foe since the attack would double the highest strength of anyone in combat (which Tara assumed included mobs and bosses). But if the attack didn't finish the fight she'd be completely defenseless and immobile. With Raif around, she would never have considered using that move because she didn't trust him to put himself on the line to protect her if things went awry. But in this situation? With Clay?

  She wasn't sure if it was because she trusted him, if she was willing to sacrifice herself out of guilt for what she'd done, or if she realized it was the only option. But Tara knew what she had to do, and she wasn't afraid to try.

  She cast Power Ballad on herself. Her STR, CON, and POW increased by 7.

  Tara cracked her neck dramatically as she prepared to leap head first with her +50% affinity blunt weapon (also known as her head) while she performed the single most powerful melee attack she could possibly imagine.

  "One Hit Wonder!"

  As she called out the ability, her body seemed to shoot out of a cannon directly at the massive Hound. Her head struck it directly on the side of its skull, which caused the beast to be launched directly into a nearby wall. It was almost cartoonish how the cave wall collapsed on top of the large beast. She was fairly sure it wasn't dead, but it was at least strongly reconsidering its life choices while resting under that pile of debris.

  As she landed gracefully on her feet, Tara immediately realized she should probably say something. What would Clay sat at a time like this? Probably something really cool but really cliche.

  She turned to face Clay, who met her eyes in amazement.

  "Sorry I'm late, Clay."

  Tara attempted to step forward to help him up. She extended her hand. But as she reached out, she felt her entire body go completely limp.

  "I leave the rest up to you."

  Her body collapsed on the ground right next to him. Her body was completely numb. She felt like one of those inflatable tube guys you see outside of used car lots after it had been deflated.

  "You're really amazing, do you know that?"

  She heard Clay's voice echo in her head.

  Did he say that to Tara just now? Or was she just remembering when he said that to her when they were at the beach?

  "Get some rest Tara. Leave it to me."

  Those words were new. Tara knew those words weren't just a memory.

  With strength she didn't know her body had, she smiled.