He can't control everything
While in the frozen reaches of the solar system, the Netlin Mothership faced the desperate assault of Lyran fleets, in the Caribbean near the shores of Cancún, another battle, more psychic and primordial, was reaching a critical point.
The shadows around Cthulhu's resting place, the sunken city of impossible angles that was now his throne on Terra, swirled with growing fury. They were more than mere marine gloom; they were tears in the fabric of reality, ephemeral portals to voids of madness, the Ancient One's own presence manifesting as a wound in the world.
But even for an entity of Cthulhu's magnitude, omnipotence was a myth. His vast and alien consciousness, spread across the planet in a web of psychic terror, struggled to process and control the myriad open fronts. Gaia awakened. The unexpected and brutal resistance of the evolved vampires in Cancun. Nyx's global terror campaign, which, though now diminished, had created a psychic noise that interfered with his own more subtle manipulations. The traitorous alliance of the Luciferian Netlins, who, while powerful, also had their own agendas and demanded a portion of the Ancient One's "attention." And now, open warfare in outer space, where his new Netlin "allies" were under attack.
Cthulhu, the primordial god, the sleeper of eons, could not control everything at once. He was on the verge of a collapse of focus, his immense will fragmenting as he tried to manipulate too many puppets, too many realities at once.
*<
Cthulhu needed to begin attacking himself, to unleash a more direct portion of his being upon the world, and the first target would be that irritating nexus of resistance in Cancún.
With this shift in focus, with the need to refocus his power for a direct assault, some of the more distant or less crucial strands of his mind control began to loosen.
In the depths of Hollow Earth, or perhaps on some forgotten Caribbean island where they had been cast after the battle with Nyx, the few moon elves who had been corrupted and then subjugated by Cthulhu for his assault on the Dark Queen began to stir. They were remnants of an army, pawns of pawns. Their imposed lethargy, the nightmare of being controlled by a mind that was the antithesis of life, began to fade.
One by one, their eyes opened, no longer the sickly green of Cthulhu's influence, not even the chaotic red of Nyx, but the pale, frightened glow of their own recovered, however tainted and traumatized, lunar essence. They remembered fragments: serving a Dark Queen, then an even greater darkness devouring all, and themselves, moving like automatons in a nightmarish war. The horror of their actions, though not their own, hit them with the force of a tidal surge.
In Cancún, as the group tried to recover from the shock of the space battle and Amitiel's ultimatum, Aria was the first to feel it. "Something... something has changed in Cthulhu," she said, her voice strained. "The pressure... is different. More... focused. Like a beast that has stopped playing with its food and is preparing to devour."
Alatar, pale, nodded. "My scrutiny confirms it. There is a massive concentration of psychic energy at his resting place. He will... attack. Directly."
Almost simultaneously, Enki, who was monitoring global energy signatures, frowned. "I detect faint lunar elven signatures emerging from a suppressed state. Confused, scattered... in the depths. It seems that some of the servants Cthulhu used against Nyx are... awakening."
The news added another layer of uncertainty. Would these elves be an additional threat, consumed by the madness of their experiences? Or might they, in their trauma and despair, become an unexpected factor?
But the primary concern was Cthulhu. The age of puppetry and subtle influence was ending. The primeval god, sensing his strings snapping or becoming ineffective, had decided to take center stage. And everyone in Cancún knew that when Cthulhu attacked on his own, the real nightmare had only just begun. Fear, already a constant companion, intensified into icy terror.