"Welcome to the Illusory Dream Realm, big brother. I am the guardian and administrator of this world."
The Haunter of the Dark's voice had shed its earlier urgency, leaving only a soft, downy calm, still carrying that childish, nasal lilt.
"Guardian…"
Amamiya Rin turned his head, looking toward the Haunter of the Dark. Her body remained wrapped in a shroud of darkness, her expression impossible to make out.
Come to think of it, Nyarlathotep truly was the guardian of the Illusory Dream Realm, protector of the feeble gods of Earth.
Even so, Amamiya Rin did not for a moment believe that the Haunter of the Dark had appeared before him in order to protect him.
"So that's why you can grant me that power, the one called… Dream Manifestation Specialization?"
Amamiya Rin probed with the question.
"Still fretting over that sort of thing? That's right, exactly so. From the moment you took my hand and entered the Illusory Dream Realm alongside me, the great gate of the Illusory Dream Realm swung open for you."
As if recalling something amusing, the Haunter of the Dark laughed with delight.
"To turn dreams into a reality an individual is willing to believe in, to work interference upon the boundary between reality and dream, someone who walked into this world hand in hand with me, its administrator, being able to reach such a degree is only natural, wouldn't you say?"
Amamiya Rin's brow furrowed slightly.
The Haunter of the Dark had said a great deal, yet she seemed never to have answered him head-on.
"Let's be off. It isn't safe here yet. Atlach will come looking, and big brother wouldn't want his own city destroyed, would he? A city is the crystallization of the subconscious. Should it be ruined, the dreamer would go mad as well."
As she spoke, the Haunter of the Dark took Amamiya Rin's hand and led him onward.
Where their palms pressed together, that corrosive pain still burned on.
Yet along with wave after wave of that skin-dissolving agony, faint fragments of memory began to surface in Amamiya Rin's mind… no, it was more like knowledge, indescribable and impossible to pin down, mysterious and self-contradicting.
He seemed to… seemed to already know how one might come and go from the Illusory Dream Realm, though threaded through it were places of frenzied, alien distortion.
Amamiya Rin let the Haunter of the Dark lead him by the hand. He did not resist her guidance but walked at her side, pressing forward without pause, all the while examining the changes within himself.
They passed one familiar corner after another, and behind them the city lights slowly stretched thin, shrinking into a blurred afterimage. The outlines of the familiar streets and alleys quietly faded like a sand painting scoured by the tide, and in what felt like the blink of an eye, the two of them had walked clear of the city.
The ground beneath their feet had become, at some unknown point, a cold gravel of fine gray-white grit. In every direction stretched boundless desolation, no vegetation, no structures, not the faintest trace of any living thing. Even the wind had died away completely, and the air was thick with ancient dust and a chill that seeped into the bones.
The sky was a deep, unbroken black, its stars sparse and cold, giving off a faint blue glow. The distant horizon was no longer a level line but bent downward at an angle that defied all reason, as though they stood atop the crown of some vast sphere, one more step forward and there would be only an endless abyss.
"Where are you trying to take me?"
Amamiya Rin glanced back. He had finally halted his steps, and he put the question to the Haunter of the Dark loli beside him.
"The place you ought to go."
The Haunter of the Dark's voice had changed.
"To the dwelling at the terminus of all things, the dark palace of the heart of Chaos, the throne beyond time and space, the final resting place of every soul."
It was no longer the voice of a child, nor any longer the voice of a human.
The figure so close at hand could, at this moment, barely be made out as a humanoid whirlpool of black.
Yet the essence of that whirlpool was not darkness but a Chaos that devoured all light.
And behind her unfurled a pair of bat-like wings whose span rivaled a great cathedral, their membranes veined all over with black tracings like blood vessels. From her abdomen dangled dozens of tendrils resembling withered tree roots, and the thinnest of them was coiled about Amamiya Rin's wrist.
"My, my. Are we tearing off the mask now? No more keeping up the disguise?"
Gazing at this form of the Haunter of the Dark, Amamiya Rin let out a sigh.
He had no objection at all to playing along with her, feigning cordiality; the longer he could stall, the better. But the Haunter of the Dark seemed to feel her goal was all but within reach, and so she no longer intended to keep up the act of the good little child.
"The game of house is over. Come along, Amamiya Rin, for I am Nyarlathotep, I am the Crawling Chaos, and I am everywhere."
The Haunter of the Dark's tendrils wound around Amamiya Rin's waist. The enormous bat wings beat down with savage force, hurling the two of them in a great leap into the boundless void ahead.
Weightlessness swept over his whole body in an instant. Amamiya Rin looked down; the gray-white wasteland at the world's edge was shrinking away at breakneck speed, until at last it dwindled to a single invisible mote of dust.
They tore onward through the endless void, and the stars seemed to dance in mockery, shifting their arrangements from moment to moment to form pale omens that foretold destruction, arrangements so uncanny one might doubt whether anyone had ever glimpsed such symbols before and trembled at them. Meanwhile the raging winds of the aetheric world howled endlessly, telling of the bewildering darkness and loneliness beyond the cosmos.
Faced with this situation, a sense of déjà vu came over Amamiya Rin, and he dimly understood the Haunter of the Dark's purpose and the destination of this journey.
In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, the old master's avatar had been deceived by Nyarlathotep within the Illusory Dream Realm, spirited off toward Azathoth, and only saved by leaping from the vessel along the way, rescued by another Elder God.
He had likely fallen into the very same fate, bound to come face to face with that supreme deity of the Cthulhu Mythos.
But he did not understand why the Haunter of the Dark would do this.
"You mean to take me there? Why?"
Amamiya Rin asked plainly. His voice raised not the faintest echo in this endless void, yet it rang clear in the Haunter of the Dark's ears.
"Your soul was branded with the mark of a curse amid the thick mists of the dream. To the abyss, you are a most fitting morsel."
The faint red flame within that three-lobed eye blazed out in a piercing glare, and the huge bat-body loosed a wild laughter that shook the void, no longer the counterfeit voice of a child but countless overlapping voices, shrieks and murmurs from every corner of the cosmos, men and women, young and old, all echoing through the emptiness together with undisguised mockery and cruelty.
"So it really is that…"
Amamiya Rin sighed.
The destination was just as he had imagined; the reason, at least, had cleared up his confusion.
It really was because of his Long Dream, and yet… Amamiya Rin had a feeling it should not be the Long Dream alone.
"Still, I've no wish to go and face that one just yet."
Grumbling in a flat, offhand tone, Amamiya Rin turned his hand over and gripped the Haunter of the Dark's palm, clamping down hard.
It made the Haunter of the Dark glance back at Amamiya Rin despite herself, a glint of curiosity in her gaze.
And then a brilliant radiance bloomed through the endless void.
It was no ordinary brightness but pure light itself, without shadow, without impurity, only purity and hope shining forth from the very depths of the heart, like the first dawn at the splitting of heaven and earth, like the first flame to illuminate Chaos, tearing to shreds the darkness and loneliness on every side.
Amamiya Rin's form began to change. His outline blurred, growing transparent and resplendent, like a mass of gold in the midst of melting, like a ball of blazing flame!
"No! My eyes!"
The Haunter of the Dark's three-lobed eye convulsed violently.
Her eyes had been blinded by the radiance blazing forth from Amamiya Rin's body.
At the same time, she saw that tiny human vanishing, and in his place, a towering silhouette bathed in an endless sea of light!
A majestic frame woven of red and silver, its lines flowing and brimming with power, descended into this chaotic void as steady and immovable as a mountain range.
The signature dart-shaped crest atop its head shimmered with keen streaks of light along its edges, and the emerald point of light at its brow gazed at her, deep and unfathomable as a third eye. Within its golden hexagonal eyes lay a resolve and a tenacity she could not comprehend.
The Giant of Light! Ultraseven! Making his grand entrance!
The Haunter of the Dark's wild laughter cut off the very instant the radiance bloomed.
Her body began to convulse violently, as though seared by a branding iron.
Those enormous bat-like wings now beat frantically at the void, trying to flee this radiance that had come out of nowhere.
The withered-root tendrils dangling from her abdomen all spasmed and curled inward, and the thinnest one had already begun to trail wisps of black smoke from its tip.
But the Haunter of the Dark could not get away.
Because Amamiya Rin's hand was still clasped with hers.
Once, it had been the Haunter of the Dark holding on to control Amamiya Rin, to keep him from fleeing, or from being snatched away by other Great Old Ones, or by some other avatar cutting in.
Now it had become Amamiya Rin holding on to keep the Haunter of the Dark from fleeing, gripping her hand and refusing to let go.
"Let go of me!"
The Haunter of the Dark let out a shrill screech.
A thick tendril hanging from her abdomen swept in with force enough to rend the void, its tip bursting into a cloud of black mist within the light.
Amamiya Rin's whole body shuddered, yet that tendril all but disintegrated in the radiance.
Then Amamiya Rin's left hand rose and clenched into a fist.
With a thunderous crash!
A punch heavy as a mountain slammed into the Haunter of the Dark's chest.
That fist carried radiance condensed to its utmost, and the moment it landed, the Haunter of the Dark's chest caved inward in a great sunken hollow.
The dark matter that made up her form was like a water's surface struck by a thrown stone, rippling out in ring after ring, then bursting apart all at once. Countless black shards scattered in every direction, and each shard gradually annihilated within the void.
"Gah—!"
The Haunter of the Dark loosed an anguished howl, her body arching violently. The huge bat-like wings beat wildly at the void, and the tendrils hanging from her abdomen all burst as though set aflame, thrashing madly in the air.
At last she wrenched free.
No, it was not a wrenching free!
It was that the very wrist he had held snapped off whole.
From the severed wound came no blood, only churning darkness and writhing tendrils, and those tendrils, the instant they were exposed to the light, swiftly charred and withered, at last crumbling to ash and scattering away.
"For I am Nyarlathotep, I am the Crawling Chaos, and I am everywhere. Rather dashing lines, those. Care to say them one more time?"
Amamiya Rin watched the Haunter of the Dark before him, his steady tone laced with a trace of mockery.
Why had he followed the Haunter of the Dark so readily?
For one, he genuinely wished to spare the city his subconscious had built within the Illusory Dream Realm from destruction.
For another, the Haunter of the Dark's weakness was far too obvious.
Light. The Haunter of the Dark dreaded light. She could only manifest in total darkness, and could act only in brightness at or below starlight. Any stronger source, such as a flashlight or a candle, would inflict 1D6 damage per round upon her; intense light, such as a flashbulb or a searchlight, would inflict 2D6 damage per round.
Those were tabletop RPG figures, but they held true in practice as well. Though the Cthulhu Mythos was born in the modern age, so that its magnitude has been stacked ever higher by the advance of modern science and worldview, those Great Old Ones are not the flawless all-rounders of contemporary xianxia works. Each of them has its shortcomings.
Yog-Sothoth's son being bitten to death by a dog, and Great Cthulhu's weakness to boats, are famously well-worn jokes.
And the Haunter of the Dark's weakness was light. Amamiya Rin still remembered that in the story where the Haunter of the Dark appeared, even the faintest glimmer could make it recoil, and a strong beam of light was enough to banish it. It had tried to kill the protagonist, only to be driven off by lamplight, fleeing into the darkness like a whipped dog. In the end, the Haunter of the Dark succeeded in killing the protagonist only because a thunderstorm knocked out the whole city's power, stripping away entirely the barrier of light.
And when it came to light, what kind of light could surpass the radiance of an Ultraman?
His condition had not yet recovered, but when a man is fighting for his life, who bothers over the state he's in?
The Giant of Light stepped forward, his whole body blazing with white radiance, engulfing the Haunter of the Dark's form.
That vast dark body of hers began to melt under the light's glare.
Not a melting in the physical sense, but a dissolution of existence itself.
The dark matter that composed her form melted away at breakneck speed, like snowdrifts under a blazing sun, its edges steaming off endless black mist, and that mist, the instant it touched the light, was utterly annihilated, not leaving so much as a trace behind.
The Haunter of the Dark retreated in a panic.
Her body became a black afterimage, falling back at a speed far beyond anything she had shown before, fleeing into that deeper darkness.
Her half-material form was pushed to its very limit in that moment, now solid, now transparent, now piercing straight through the void, and in the blink of an eye she was about to escape beyond the range of Amamiya Rin's sight.
Yet how could Amamiya Rin not have guarded against the Haunter of the Dark trying to flee?
"Chain Beam!"
Amamiya Rin stood where he was, raising both arms to form a cross before his chest.
Golden radiance burst from the edges of his overlapped arms, like golden lightning, lancing out toward the distant Haunter of the Dark!
"Sssss—!!"
The beam struck the Haunter of the Dark's back and burst into countless fine golden serpents of lightning. Those serpents spread wildly along her vast dark body, like an airtight net of woven light, wrapping her form up entirely.
The Haunter of the Dark's body went abruptly rigid.
Her whole frame was like an insect frozen in amber, fixed in place within the void, unable to move.
"How can there be such a thing?"
The Haunter of the Dark could not comprehend it. As an omniscient dark god, that she should be driven into so wretched a plight while facing a mere human.
This was not normal! This was absolutely not normal!
"I'm grateful for your help, truly, for granting me the power to come and go freely from the dream. But as an evil god, surely you're prepared to be destroyed as well?"
Amamiya Rin drew his right fist back to his waist and held his left palm level before his chest.
Energy gathered from all across his body up to his brow, and that emerald point of light grew, in that moment, incomparably brilliant, incomparably blazing, letting the Haunter of the Dark feel the threat of annihilation.
____
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