“You’re not so handsome when you skulk,” Danu said.
She had sat next to Ala and they could have been children playing with a miniature figurine from the right vantage point. I was the miniature and I had never felt so small.
“You don’t have to be so deflated, little human,” Ala said encouragingly. “You managed to get here didn’t you? I think you can leave the way you came.”
Danu nodded and the red curls of her hair bobbed. Both their hair was long and curly past their shoulders and it was the only truly human thing about them other than their voices and the shapes of their forms.
“It’s all in the name, human,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. “It’s the Dreamlands, named so by the likes of you because you all can only come here in dreams. So it seems to me that you need only wake up to leave this place.”
Ala stared at me with her emotive, black eyes and she half smiled.
“It’s pretty obvious when you hear it out loud, isn’t it?” she said.
“I guess so,” I said with frustration that must have been humorous to the gigantic women who giggled down at me and covered their mouths with their hands in embarrassment.
“But how do I make myself wake up?” I continued, genuinely confused. “Is knowing I’m dreaming enough to wake me up?”
Danu shook her head with something like pity on her alabaster face.
“Wouldn’t you be awake now if that was the case?” Ala asked like a sympathetic friend trying to guide me to the obvious.
I hung my head. How long would I be stuck in the Dreamlands before I woke up? I didn’t ask the question out loud because even though Danu and Ala were being as nice as they could, they still laughed at me and made me feel stupid.
Before anyone could say anything else, the sky began to darken over us and when I looked up, I was filled with dread. Even from the vantage on the ground, I knew Nyarlathotep was descending over top of us and I saw his Timberlands dangling at the end of his long legs. He seemed to be hanging from a dark cloud and when he touched ground, Geb, Ala, Danu and I watched the black and gray tentacle that he’d been holding tightly with one of his big hands, retract up into the cloud that was unnaturally close to the desert floor.
“You thought you could get away from me hiding out with these folks?” Nyarlathotep asked with a menacing delight on his face.
“Why’d you have to bring that thing with you?” Geb asked with loud frustration.
“Y’all don’t learn,” Nyarlathotep said. “Y’all should’ve called me as soon as you found this man, you know he don’t belong here. But y’all forget your place here in the Dreamlands. When you’re here, Earth God means very little compared to us Outer Gods, and Azathoth is as mad as me that y’all still so willful like y’all run shit.”
I could feel the tension rising and it was thick. Danu and Ala were both standing silent and very angry, and their bodies were tense like they were ready for a physical confrontation.
“Azathoth would like a word,” Nyarlathotep said and pointed up at the cloud, just as a thick bolt of black lightning hit the ground between him and us.
I jumped and scampered behind Ala when the thunder roared all around us and the desert floor shook. When I peaked around Ala’s leg, there was a tall man standing in front of Nyarlathotep with his hands on his hips. There was a moving black mass around him, like an aura, but solid. It could have been oil, it looked very slick and thick at the same time. The features of his face were the most human of all of the Gods around me, but the skin of his face was covered in makeup that bordered on the cartoonish. He wore what seemed to be skin tight leather on his arms and legs and he had a large afro that was parted on one side.
“Stand down ladies,” he said in a deep voice. “Azathoth is not here to fight.”
The black aura settled into a cape that was as beautiful as the garments that Ala and Danu wore. Then he pointed at me and his finger seemed long enough to touch me across the distance between us. I cowered behind Ala again.
“That thing is not common to these lands. And I hear he ain’t acting like a human should. You realize that he insulted the dread Nyarlathotep? Yet there he is, cowering in your protection. What do you Gods have to say for yourselves?”
I was petrified. The tension had more than risen and I was an insect at the feet of angry Gods posturing as though they meant to brawl.
PRL Serials 