The new rules

In Amitiel's Citadel, Neptune Orbit

In the heart of the Netlin Mothership, or perhaps in its icy, cyclopean citadel hidden deep within Neptune, Supreme Commander Amitiel watched a nexus of pure energy open in the center of his command room. It was not a screen, but a controlled tear in the fabric of space-time, a window into a consciousness that defied geometry and reason. Through it, the "presence" of Cthulhu, newly arrived from his disturbing ascension from Earth, manifested.

What was seen of Cthulhu was a shifting nightmare: a swirling mass of iridescent tentacles that seemed to absorb the light, myriad eyes of impossible colors that opened and closed like flickering stars in a sky of madness, and the vague suggestion of a monstrous cephalopod head whose form never quite settled, causing a subtle but persistent visual and psychic nausea in the lesser Netlin Luciferians who attended their Commander. And in what might be considered its "face," a movement, a parting of the facial tentacles that revealed a glimpse of a maw leading to other, darker voids, could be interpreted as a great grin of cosmic satisfaction and pure malevolence.

Amitiel, on her throne of dark light and fractured crystal, bowed her perfect head slightly, a gesture of calculated respect to the primordial entity. A sinister smile, a colder and more precise reflection of Cthulhu's, touched his inhumanly beautiful lips.

Then Cthulhu "spoke." His voice was not a sound that vibrated in the air, but a resonance felt in the bones, in the soul, a guttural voice that was the creaking of dying galaxies, the wail of collapsing realities, and the echo of eons of fevered dreams in sunken cities. Each "word" was a psychic shockwave that caused the surrounding reality to flicker and momentarily distort.

"Little Brother... Amitiel..." Cthulhu's "voice" resounded in the minds of all present, a chorus of abysses. "The convergence... is complete. The cycle... accelerates." The... cleansing... is progressing as... planned by our unified and transcendent will.>> His gaze, if the attention of his many wandering eyes could be called that, seemed to encompass everything and nothing at once, but a portion of his vast awareness was clearly focused on Amitiel.

"Indeed, Great Old One, Ancient Dreamer," Amitiel replied, his own voice resonant and cold, but with an undeniable tinge of deference shown only to Cthulhu. "Our plan is proceeding just as we conceived it in the dark ages, when the stars were young and Order had not yet been sullied by the proliferation of lesser chaos. The petty resistances that have arisen on the planet Terra crumble like dust before our combined strategy."

"Those... Anunnaki..." Cthulhu's guttural thought continued, and a wave of cosmic contempt emanated from his presence, making the lesser Luciferians flinch. "Those who groveled in the mud of Terra, playing gods with their genetic creations... have been... swept away. Their pathetic and inefficient meddling with the planet's... energy harvest... their lousy work of extraction... has ceased. Weak. Predictable. An insult to the true potential of entropy and devotion."

Amitiel nodded, his smile deepening. "As you have always taught with your unfathomable wisdom, O Sleeper of the Abyss: if you want something done right, do it yourself, or trust in those who truly understand the scale and purity of the Grand Design." There was a shared understanding, a sinister communion of purpose between the Herald of Absolute Order and the Avatar of Primordial Chaos.

<> Cthulhu proclaimed, and space itself seemed to tremble. <>

"And we, brother," Amitiel replied, his eyes like cold quasars glowing with the promise of cosmic tyranny, "will be the scribes of that new age, the architects of that perfect silence."

The two beings, one the embodiment of primordial madness and the other the apostle of an order so absolute it was indistinguishable from death, shared a moment of dark, triumphant anticipation. Their unholy alliance was cemented, their contempt for all life or death any will other than his own was absolute. The next phase of his plan was about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting solar system, and the rules of the game, as Cthulhu had said, were about to change in irrevocable and terrifying ways.