The microbes of this planet

Nyx swirled in a nexus of shadows and chaotic energy, a makeshift refuge in the bowels of Hollow Earth. Poimandres, her draconic form of pure Chaos, lay beside her, visibly diminished, fissures of pure, disturbing light—the wounds inflicted by Cthulhu and his Netlin Luciferian allies—running across her scales of darkness. The Queen of Eternal Night was wounded, furious, and for the first time in many eons, she felt the cold touch of existential fear. The combined onslaught had been nearly annihilating.

But even in her weakened state, her pride and malice remained undimmed. She could sense Cthulhu's vast, alien consciousness, a presence that now spread across the planet like a cosmic oil slick, its attention momentarily diverted from her, focused on the anomalous resistance she had encountered on the surface, in that irritating focal point of Cancún.

A cruel, bitter smile touched Nyx's lips.

"What is it, Great Sleeper?" she projected her thought with a mixture of sarcasm and defiance, a needle of awareness seeking the vast, warped mind of the Ancient One. "Is the reality of this small planet more... leathery than you expected? I heard your Fae puppets, those bloody playthings, met a rather sticky end at the hands of a few mortals, a handful of cheap mages, and... some noticeably irritated vampires."

She expected a wave of cosmic fury in response, and there was one, but mixed with something else: a cold, ancient... bewilderment. And that was when Nyx saw it.

Not with her physical eyes, but through a residual connection, a psychic filament she hadn't known existed until that moment. She recalled her brief but intense mental duel with the young mage, Aria, in Cancun, just before Cthulhu and the Luciferians attacked her. The girl's strange new magic, that resonance of truth and Chi, had left an imprint, an echo in her own consciousness.

And now, through that imprint, as if looking through a distorted window, Nyx witnessed with astonishing clarity the scene of the massacre at the Cancun base: Dracula, wrapped in wings of crimson shadow, unleashing blasts of blood that decapitated Faeries as if they were made of paper; Malakor, the Red Wizard turned vampire, roaring like an elemental storm, wreathed in chaotic fire and lightning; the Punishers, transformed into beasts of fury and cursed power, tearing apart Faeries who had been freed from Cthulhu's control only to fall into his clutches.

"The mage girl... Aria..." Nyx realized with a mixture of fury at the intrusion and a new, astute appreciation. "When our minds touched... she left an anchor. I can see through her, or through the disturbance her strange 'truth' magic causes in the Grid! How deliciously careless of her!"

What she saw astonished and, reluctantly, impressed her. The power unleashed by those vampires was... unexpected. Primitive, yes, but of a magnitude that defied the logic of her simple undeath.

And Cthulhu "saw" it too, or sensed it, through the connection to his destroyed servants and perhaps through Nyx's own disturbance. The Ancient One's wave of bewilderment intensified, laced with a cold, alien fury.

Nyx could almost taste the "confusion" of the vast cosmic mind, if such a human emotion could be applied to such an entity. It was a series of impressions, cold and vast as dying galaxies:

<>

Cthulhu could not believe, or could not easily comprehend, that these "simple" vampires, tools of the night that should normally be trivial to an entity of their magnitude, had become such foci of destructive power. The "damned force" that Dracula had unleashed, the chaotic evolution of Malakor... these were variables that Cthulhu's cosmic equation hadn't anticipated.

Nyx allowed herself a genuine, if bitter, smile. Her enemy was being challenged, even if it was by other foes. "It seems, Great Cthulhu," she projected with renewed mockery, "that the microbes on this planet have more bite than you expected. Perhaps you should have focused on a single front before awakening all the guard dogs, however mangy they may be."

The connection with Aria was a double-edged sword, she knew. But for now, it offered her a privileged view of the battlefield and the unexpected resistance Cthulhu faced. And it gave Nyx a new and dangerous idea. If these vampires could achieve such power Perhaps there were ways to exploit his terrible new evolution for his own purposes, once he survived the current hunt. The game, though deadly, was becoming increasingly interesting.