Horrors of the Dancing Gods

INTO THE WOODS AT MOUNT DOOM

NOBODY EXCEPT MARGE HAD SLEPT VERY WELL DURING the morning, but all had adrenaline pumping at a massive rate by the time they assembled that evening at the battlement, including whatever Poquah's race substituted for it. He of course was still the only one who did not seem to feel undue concern.

Irving had decided on a minimalist approach, with the idea of wearing a single loincloth seeming both impractical and silly, not to mention unclean. Instead, he opted for nothing but a belt with a basic leather scabbard that would handle the sword and keep it from cutting his leg off in a fall, a black leather codpiece, and the leather straps to support them. He would also carry a backpack into the valley, but that would be left wherever they made camp. Everyone was to carry his or her own supplies.

Larae opted for almost exactly the same thing, except that she had her sling, stones in a pouch, and dagger on a slightly wider belt and would carry her javelinlike spear. The sight of the codpiece looked silly on that body, but Irving knew it was damnably necessary and not just part of the outfit.

Poquah wore brown and green britches and a more standard sword belt and scabbard affair, but he looked a lot more basic and a lot more sinister, as he had the times the others had seen the usually silent Imir go into battle.

Joel Thebes wore his crumpled and very dirty white suit and black saddle-style tie shoes.

They all gasped when they saw Marge, and she gave them the sexy smile and a movie star pose. "Really stunning, the new me, huh?'

"Criminal," Poquah sniffed. "I knew this would happen! If you touch either of these two, I'll risk iron myself to finish you!"

She smiled sweetly at him and blew him a mock kiss. "You know you couldn't do it. No man is ever going to be able to do that to me. Don't worry, I'm still on the team and we have the same goals. I'm not about to go after Joe's kid. But if you didn't want this to happen, you shoulda provided some way for it not to happen, or Ruddygore or the Sisterhood or somebody should have, right? It feels so right, so normal, I almost think the reason you all didn't was because I was always supposed to be one of these and everybody but me knew it. Irving, close your mouth, pull in your tongue, think of your almost lady love here, and remember that in an hour or so we're gonna be shot right into a situation that's likely to kill us all in the next couple of days, anyway. Right?"

Even Larae, whose only interest in girls until then had been as rivals or critical examples, felt the attraction Marge now exuded. The difference was, she now felt herself torn between a desire to complete her transformation to male and a wish to become one of those.

At precisely eighteen hundred, about ninety minutes before sunset at that season in that latitude, the figure of a monk appeared among them on the battlement. In spite of bright sunshine, he still looked as if he were in deep shadow.

Mephistopheles looked at Marge, but not as other men had. "I see that you have made the final transition. More than ever now you must trust your instincts. There will probably be good prey in there for a seductress, but use the power wisely. Iron about fifty millimeters below the heart will kill you as surely as it will kill any other of the facie, and you have no power over women of any type."

She nodded. "I'll be careful. That much hasn't changed. How do we get to Mount Doom, though? Shouldn't we have left before now in order to travel? I mean, it's like another thousand miles, isn't it?"

"Almost, but that is using the methods of the world. Come! All together now! Have hold of what you wish to bring with you, for there will be no chance to do this twice!" The Prince of Hell put his arms out straight to either side and faced the south-southwest. "All face where I face and be prepared. Even now the battle rages, and we shall soon join it. Each of you touch one other close to you, and at least one of you touch my robe. Yes, thank you. Do not fear what you see — it is being done for your own benefit. Be prepared for bizarre and violent sights and sounds and dizzying sensations, but hold fast. You must hit the ground running and be into that wood in the blink of an eye, as soon as you see the opening. Many lives and souls of great bravery and value are being put on the line for you! Do not let them down!" He paused. "Ready? You see? I am in Hell, and Hell is in all places at once. Therefore, since you are with me, we are already there!"

The entire world, even the entire universe, suddenly vanished.

They approached the dark at the end of the tunnel before they could think any more about it.

And like that they burst through into an insane, chaotic roar of battle on a vast supernatural scale.

All around them, great dark shapes like giants in a twisted shadow play rode even more horrifying steeds that snorted, exuded, and shot fire and brimstone and electrical energies at an equally horrific series of giant apparitions in front of them. The enemy seemed outlined in bright white energy yet was all animal hatred, with slashing fangs and razor-sharp claws not of flesh and blood but of supernatural energy, the true underlying That behind All That.

It was the most awful, terrifying thing any of them had ever seen, made all the more so by their total lack of control over anything, including being able to run or hide or block from their vision the grisly and grotesque war of the evil gods that raged all around them. Instead, they tried to focus forward on a tiny sliver of light, of reality, toward which they slowly moved even as they stood motionless with Mephistopheles.

The pinpoint grew abruptly larger, surrounding and overwhelming them, and they felt the suddenness of wind on their faces and the heat of the early evening and saw a. vast impenetrable-looking forest only a few dozen meters in front of them.

They didn't wait for an invitation; although they were all still stunned and reeling from the incomprehensible violence through which they'd come, they each acted out of an instinct for self-preservation and hit the ground running hard for those trees, not stopping until they were well inside the thick grove and hidden by its shadows.

Irving still wasn't thinking; he flattened himself against a tree, breathing hard, the terror in his face impossible to disguise. He wasn't certain where Larae was, but he thought he could hear her gasping for breath not far from him, while over in another corner came the sound of the oily Thebes whimpering.

Poquah had been in that realm before, although never against that sort of enemy or facing that intensity of sheer hatred. He had felt and been unnerved as they had, but his nearly absolute self-control had not wavered. Only the fact that he was breathing almost as hard as the others showed that there was anything more going on inside his head.

Of them all, Marge felt the least affected, and she wasn't sure why. Certainly she'd never seen anything like that before, but what had been total horror and confusion for the others had been to her like a great thrill ride; she could still feel the sense of exhilaration from all the energy that had washed over and through her. It felt as if she'd just come off the greatest roller coaster in the world, one with, nothing but superhill after superhill. The sense of extreme danger, of the potential for instant death or psychic dismemberment, far from being so terribly frightening, had only increased the thrill. She hadn't had this much fun, felt this great, since… since…

Hell, she'd never felt this great!

She'd been a wimpy Kauri far too long. This was living again!

She could see and sense that her companions did not share her enthusiasm, and it amused her. I'm the only real female in this whole bunch, and I've got all the balls, she thought with some satisfaction.

She walked through the forest, finding each of them in turn and saying in a normal tone not designed to bring unwanted attention but sufficient to be heard by them all, "Come on, come out! We've got to get moving! The dark's not gonna pose a big problem for me, but it sure will for the rest of you. Let's move in and set up some sort of camp here."

Slowly, shakily, they all managed to let go, although Thebes let go and followed only when it was suggested that the alternative was that he not come and thus be left there for whoever or whatever came along.

"What — what was that?" Larae managed after a while.

"Just what the demon said it was," Poquah responded. "That is total war in the realm of Heaven and Hell and, in this case, a third force as well. Ugly, is it not? Ugly and beautiful at one and the same time."

"I–I could make sense of little of it," she admitted.

He nodded. "None of us could. Our minds aren't capable of processing that sort of information, nor are our brains fast enough and clever enough to interpret what we were seeing. The result was a series of horrific impressions, true, and all of the chaos of battle, but nothing specific. I must admit, though, that it was useful and instructive in judging the enemy here."

"How so?" Irving asked him. "All I got was a lot of hatred and animal lust."

"True. That's what I got, too. The mason this temporary breakthrough worked was that the forces of Hell were employing carefully plotted battle plans. There was intellect, organization, and discipline there, and it was pitted against raw emotional power. No plan, no coordination, no discipline, just all the base passions. The only reason they am formidable is the depth of their power. Intellect can hold against brute force in most cases, but if that is the force level now, imagine what it will be like if these demigods truly come through. I believe that's what Hell fears, what it cannot withstand. If just the followers here can muster this kind of power and wrest and tear even this small spot flout the Prince of Hell himself, then who or what could withstand their masters?"

There was a sudden low, ominous rumbling that seemed to come from all around, and the very earth shook and the trees began to sway this way and that. The earth shifted beneath them, throwing them all briefly to the ground.

It went on for a few seconds but stopped almost as quickly as it had started. There was, however, still the sound of only slightly more distant mumbling and the occasional whiff of sulfur.

They picked themselves up in the deepening gloom of the forest. "What was that?" Irving asked as they set off, unnerved once again.

"A minor earthquake, I believe," Poquah told him. "We are walking into a deep valley cutting right into a gigantic and somewhat active volcano, remember, and these forces all around certainly won't help pacify its normal and natural anger."

"There is no danger of it erupting onto us, is there?" Larae asked nervously.

"I don't think so," the Imir replied, "even though that would be very symmetrical and thus in full accord with the Rules. To do so, though, would mean wiping out this valley and this forest, and I believe that these specific segments, mostly remnants moved here from Earth after the Fall, are pretty well protected. Not, however, from earthquakes and other similar phenomena."

"You sure you're going in the right direction?" Irving asked him nervously. "It's getting pretty dark."

"I'm an Imir. Being in trouble in my natural forest element would be as unthinkable as it would be for, say, a wood nymph. Ah! See?"

It emerged right out of the ground, surrounded and even overgrown by the trees, but it was a large and very round-looking cave.

"Lava tube," Poquah explained. 'There do appear to have been some limited eruptions in here, after all. Perhaps we can use that somehow."

Irving looked at it nervously. "You mean lava comes out of that thing? Forget it! No way I'm goin' in there!"

"It doesn't tend to happen twice. This was formed in the process; it's not a cannon. It appears perfect for us, and convenient. All of us can fit in there, it's not easy to spot, and there aren't a lot of nasty other things living in it."

"I think I'd rather stay outside than be in there," Larae commented, and Irving nodded.

"No telling what is in those trees after dark; you'd have no warning and no chance if something dropped on you," Poquah pointed out. "This might not be as comfortable, but there's rock and dirt all around you. There is no time when you need more protection than now, when we don't know what is here. Later, when we see what we are dealing with, we can adjust."

Marge looked at it. "No way I am crawling in there," she told him, then chuckled. "I don't think you'd want me in such close quarters. Let me see what I can see."

"No! Not yet!" Poquah snapped. "You more than anyone are vulnerable to them, since they are such raw emotion. I cannot afford to have you, engulfed by their power and go over to their side while you know all that we know!"

"You can't afford…! You can't stop me from doing anything I want to do. None of you can. It's already dark, and you're gonna have to set up by braille as it is, since even faerie sight isn't all that much use in that lava tube. I can see very well. You are all ground huggers. I can fly. You might not approve of my personality change, although I'm getting to like it more and more, but I know which side I'm on. You better watch that iron they're packing when you're all stuffed in there, Poquah. You're in more immediate danger from them than from whatever's out there."

There was no reply for a while as Poquah's legendary control was tested to the hilt, but as he was about to say something, there came the sound of huge crowds and rhythmic chanting that seemed to emanate from farther inside the valley. The friction within their company was forgotten for the moment.

"That's from that structure they have been building," Poquah said. "It sounds like thousands of voices all gathered in some ritual."

"I'm getting mighty curious about that structure," Marge told them. "I think I'm going to have a look at it from the air, from a spot where elevation will prevent me from having to get too close. Set up your camp. I'll be back!" And with that, she lifted off into the air and was soon lost beyond the treetops.

Irving gave a low whistle. "She's sure changed. Cold and sexy at the same time, but dangerous-type sexy. The only thing I can see of the old Marge is the Texas accent." Poquah thought a moment. "I am inclined to move, since who knows what will happen if she's captured, but she is correct. We'd have to work our way through this in total darkness, and for all its sense of ancient power, it is not a true faerie wood." He sighed. "I warned Master Ruddygore that this would happen, but he dismissed it. Now we shall all have to hope that it works out."

"What did she mean, none of us could stop her from doing anything?' Irving asked him, an odd thought occurring to him at that moment.

"No matter what we were originally or behaviorally, we are all sexually male," the hair noted. "With great concentration, skill, and magical protections, we may well be able to stave off the power of a Succubus and not succumb to her, but we could never hope to reverse it. We can defend but not attack. It would take a true woman to do that — beg your pardon, Larae, but you know that does not include you — and even then, she is not defenseless. The primary difference between a Kauri and a Succubus is that one cleans up small messes while the other is an out-and-out predator."

"That's kinda what I thought she meant," the boy replied. But he couldn't help wondering about that curse, that on-again, off-again curse that he had been assured by a true demon, minor or not, would work on all females who could and did cohabit with human males. That certainly would include a Succubus, a far more minor and elemental being under Hell's domain. If she could not resist him and he could not resist her, what would happen if they went head to head? He couldn't help but wonder — and hope that he didn't have to find out.

Marge broke above the treetops with effortless ease and looked around at the spectacular setting they had not been able to see on arrival. The menacing presence of Mount Doom loomed over all else, tall enough that it seemed to make its own weather at the top, including dense clouds that interacted with the hot steam and lava in the caldera to produce local thunder and lightning storms around the top of the mammoth structure.

It was in slow eruption from a flank volcano, but the lava stream was headed away from the valley and toward the ocean of the south coast not too far beyond. This valley was more on the inland side, which seemed at the moment to have least volcanic activity.

It did, however, have activity of a different kind. Over alone the far side of the valley the forest had been cleared away, and a well-built road cut into the heart of the forest, ending at that central structure.

It was a large rectangular affair, well lit by huge limelight arrays that bathed the central area as if it were daylight Startled, she realized that the two structures on either side were bench-type seats filled with living creatures and that they were moving in unison, one side and the other, but to different chants and in different rhythms, and that that was where the sounds were coming from.

If she didn't know better, she thought, frowning, she'd swear… No, that was ridiculous! She had to know more, and that meant getting close enough to see just what was actually going on down there. The skies were not safe or unguarded; large creatures with bat wings and lizard faces rode night gaunts around and around in lazy patterns, but they were few, far between, and regular, easy to avoid. They were looking for bigger game and more dangerous menaces than she would appear to them in any event, but they seemed pretty calm and almost bored. Clearly they did not expect anything there, not so close to their heart.

Slowly, cautiously, she approached; as she did, the chants from the two sides of the structure came to her in waves, and she was able to some extent to separate them.

"Id! Cthulhu! Block that kick!"

"Yd! Ed! Yog Sothoth! Hold that line!"

As Marge watched openmouthed, she saw denizens—creatures—lining up on one side of the field clearly defending a goal before an opposing line of even more loathsome things. They quivered, they gibbered, they dripped, and they slimed, but they moved forward against each other for the prize, a prize that was terrified and very much bloodied but alive.

One team seemed very much at a disadvantage; its creatures seemed to have oozed out of the sea and were very much off balance on land, lacking the coordination to battle the other side, whose own monstrosities appeared to be far more comfortable on land and in the immediate air. Just as defeat was staring them in the face, however, there was what could only have been a time-out, and when play resumed, the land-bound side was suddenly faced with a massive, countless horde of goatlike things chomping and slobbering their way forward almost in a wall.

"Shub Niggurah! Shub Niggurah!" the Cthulhu crowd chanted, apparently delighted at the appearance of an ally.

Marge turned away and decided to check out the rest of the valley while the creatures were preoccupied. How she was ever going to get the others to believe this, though, was something she didn't even want to think about.

All this couldn't have been about building some stadium for some stupid, loathsome game, could it? Or did those names have other meanings? Were those in the stadium not perhaps merely playing games but goofing off, relaxing after a hard day's work?

Certainly, from more of a distance, she could see and even feel what was too omnipresent to pick out closer in: the massive cloud of bizarre evil that seemed to be centered there, to be oozing from that point out to the whole of the world.

Right from the center of that stadium, almost like one of those steam vents on the volcano over there.

So the stadium wasn't just a stadium. Or perhaps it was more than a stadium. At night they goofed off, but by day they built, and a fissure in space-time opened there in the middle of the field and stayed open, spewing forth its evil ectoplasmic ichor.

It wasn't all that clear whether there was any other development anywhere in the valley, though, and all those creatures, as loathsome and horrible as they were, were recognizable as having once been far more normal-looking and probably native to here. If there was an entity — something new, special, and not of this universe — it had yet to show itself. If it was still in the valley, though, it was hard to figure how it could hide from faerie sight, if only by a sudden cessation of it.

She tried to remember the map of the valley they'd gotten from Macore. Over there, on a line from the stadium and then just a wee bit farther up. Up inside the rocks, that very different grove of trees — that was it! She looked back toward where Poquah had made camp and scowled. So cautious and so limited!

She flew just above treetop level in hopes of attracting no attention and went over toward the spot where she was certain the McGuffin lay. It would take a mortal to get it — she understood that — but if she could spot it and scout a decent route, they might be able to do this in nearly record time. It was beginning to look like a real piece of cake in spite of it all.

She recognized the tree almost immediately. It was set off from the rest, and it had its own sort of meadow completely surrounding its vast, thick trunk. The local trees even seemed to bend in just slightly toward it as if deferring to its age and rank, and it was certainly old.

It was unlike any other tree in this forest or in fact most other trees anywhere, but she had seen its kin. Not exactly the same, but you could tell the relationship. This tree, even in darkness, exuded multiple metallic bands of color on the faerie level, glimmering beautifully as it displayed the entire spectrum. Closer in, the trunk seemed almost golden, the leaves like copper or bronze, and the fruit, the perfect fruit, like..

Little green apples.

Once she'd seen the Tree of Life. Now she was in the presence of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

One bite, she thought bitterly. One lousy crunch and it screwed everything up for everybody. She couldn't help but wonder what would happen to anybody who had a second bite of the fruit. It wouldn't matter. It had stained the souls of all creation and brought death and judgment to humankind. The knowledge of good and evil…

It had cursed the faerie, too. Some in the Garden had failed to prevent the disobedience or even had egged it on. So the faerie had been cast out of Heaven as well and condemned to lose to mortal humankind on Earth and be driven here to await the final judgment.

Somewhere within sight of that tree was the Great McGuffin. She looked around, seeing at last a lava extrusion in back of the tree at the edge of the grove, going up and blending into a rise. It looked a bit like a stage and a bit like an altar as well, but it didn't look like the hiding place for anything important.

Still, it had to be there, and they were, oh, at worst, under five miles from their final destination.

She suddenly felt a strong pang of real danger, not from above but from below, from the grove! What? Who? she wasn't sure, but it was very strong and very menacing; it was alive, and it was down there.

And something about it was hauntingly familiar.

She was being probed! Something horribly evil down there was checking her out! She decided to get the hell out of there immediately and sped off as quickly as possible back toward the camp.

Her new confidence shaken, she regained most of her composure before she got back to the others after she determined that whoever or whatever had discovered her was not following.

Of course not, she thought nervously. It knows we either have to come to it or give up, and either way it wins. Poquah wasn't going to like this at all, either.

He didn't, but he seemed more relieved at her return and her report than concerned about it.

"As you say, it suggests an easy task," he agreed. "Why should they trouble themselves with a heavy defense, manhunts, and the rest when they know we must come to them? How much of a force do you think they have around there?"

"Impossible to say, but I didn't sense anybody. That one was more than enough. I don't remember ever feeling that kind of power or that strange and alien a sensation from it, either, but the funny thing is, I did find something familial there. I just can't put my finger on it!" She suddenly stopped, frowned, and looked around. "Where is Joel Thebes?"

"What!" Poquah shot around and surveyed the scene, looking for auras, and he found two where there should have been three. "I thought it smelled better here, but I couldn't be certain!"

"He said he was going to take a leak," Irving noted. "That was quite a while ago now, but I guess I just didn't think about it."

Marge surveyed the whole area. "Well, he's gone now. You want me to try and find him? I might be able to put the come-hither on him if he still has anything between his legs."

"No," the Imir replied. "However, it does mean that we can no longer stay here under any circumstances, and that means you must lead. Whether he is a traitor or simply blunders into one of them, he will betray us all. Get us closer to this grotto, and we will see what we might be up against"

"You're not going to try it tonight!" She was appalled at the idea. "You haven't experienced that — thing — out there."

"Not tonight, no," Poquah agreed. "However, close to dawn is a different story."

"What have you got in mind?" she asked him.

`Think about the situation. This entity obviously knows that we must make a try for the McGuffin. It must also be assumed that it has at least a reasonable idea of who and what we are by this point. The most important thing is that the McGuffin is still there. It hasn't been used, nor is it currently in anyone's hands. That means the entity can't get at it, either. Possibly all those on his side, even the mortals, get so corrupted with this alien plasma that it prevents them from picking it up as well. I do not think they will stop us. I am not even certain they will try to capture us, although I could be wrong in that. They want one of us, probably Irving, to pick up the McGuffm. Then they will move without giving him time to use it."

"And you're still going for it? Now?"

"Yes. The entity must be cursing itself right now. It made a mistake in probing, in betraying its location and its power to you. Now we know it is there. What is the commonsense approach?"

"Lay off. Try and figure a way in. Sneak in, if possible."

"Exactly. It will not, I hope, be quite so prepared for us rushing straight in as quickly as possible. We will gain nothing by putting it off. We need to act. Now, tell me about what you saw at the structure and the entities you heard as exactly as you can while we gather up what we have here and make ready to shift position."

"You aren't gonna believe this."

"Perhaps. What were the names?"

"Forgive my pronunciation problems. One sounded like Cath-oo-loo."

"Cthulhu. Ancient master of all the waters. Yes."

"Yog something or other."

"Yog Sothoth. Master of the Air, the Lurker at the Threshold. He will be first through, for he and his followers alone have the key and power to punch through. Any more?"

"Shub somebody."

"Shub Niggurah. The Goat with a Thousand Young. Yes, very consistent. The seed of this one, that pantheon's symbol of fertility, bears careful watching. You won't be just a pleasure nymph under her. You will be used to help breed what they require. Remember that!"

"If she's a goat who has all those kids, why does she need me?"

"Regardless of form or attitude, you were never stupid before, so please do not start now. The goat is often associated with fertility, as are the rabbit and the egg, the symbols of Ishtar upon which your own cult originated. Likewise the satyr, the male nymph, Pan, half-human and half-goat and all the time on the make. It is difficult to say what kind of creations she would make of such as you, but you would not be pleased."

"I get the idea. So, as usual, we're all the way here with no hope and everything against us, huh?"

"That about sums it up," he agreed.

"Figure the entity needs the McGuffin to complete his opening, right? That's why it picked here. Something has blocked him, probably something in the Rules, which it's still stuck with until the takeover, right?"

"Yes."

"So somewhere there's a way for us to win. The Rules demand it."

"That is certainly true," the Imir agreed. "However, finding it simply can't work every time…"