For all that Owen tried to stay awake as long as possible to hear what was going on that night, he was only mortal - and a lot had already happened thus far, contributing to a gnawing tiredness. Despite the unnatural feeling of the castle, and everything that happened, he couldn't help himself. His eyes wavered first, hands clenching the sheets as he laid there in bed. Trying to listen, trying to hear what might be happening. Beads of sweat teased the tops of his eyes, and he tossed and turned - trying to keep himself awake but only succeeding in feeling more of the bed beneath him.
Owen tried to stand up, do some exercises in the room - but this only succeeded in wearing his energy levels down, such that he sat on his bed again. He pulled out his phone, trying to look at some news - but found that the WiFi here was completely dead. He hoped that wasn't a precursor of anything.
Owen glanced at the pictures on the phone, including ones he still had of himself and Emily. Remembering the better days, remembering the painful split, that always seemed to keep him at least somewhat aware if bitter. But today he just felt like wanting to dream, to think back to those days and try to create a new version somehow.
He stared at the ceiling fan, watching the blades pass through the air once...twice...thrice...eight times...twenty six times...he was starting to feel even more out of sorts with the feeling. The skinhead's breaths came out ragged as he laid there in bed. Not wanting to tuck himself in for fear of waking the next morning and seeing what sort of disaster Hartmann had planned for them had passed in total success.
Owen couldn't sleep...but maybe... his mind started making these "compromises". Thinking of how to handle this.
'I can afford to get a little nap.'
Owen thus laid there, in a fitful state of almost sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness. Several hours passed by with him like this. And with him none the wiser, much would happen in Castle Drosstein while he was in this state.
***
Scottie stirred from his own uneasy rest, shaking awake with a start. His eyes wide with fear from what he saw - something he couldn't even quantify. His arms and legs were shaking so severely that when he tried to stand up again, he was left stumbling over himself. His first thoughts being that he desperately wanted to leave that fucking room. Something told him in his gut that the Eon Chronicle was not innocent in what he saw. That it was somehow tied to those ancient horrors that now lurked beneath the waves.
"Lucky---Lucky we've got to---" His voice caught in his throat, which felt ragged and ached. It felt like a severe sore throat, every breath and every word catching and dragging through a feeling of sandpaper.
But he heard the noise. That sound that had previously felt like music to his ears - the feeling of the sphere spreading, the display of the holograms, the Eon Chronicle's crackling and humming - which now only seemed to him like a dirge. His eyes wide as he turned, hesitating at several points as he felt a paralytic dread. Not wanting to look. Not wanting to see what was happening. Who was utilizing the device - even though he knew the answer.
He didn't see Lucky where the two of them had fallen asleep.
An involuntary step back. A couple tears dragged from his eyes. He could see Lucky's newly powerful caveman form standing there beneath the suddenly harsh light of the Eon Chronicle. Eyes wild and wide open, seeming to be both staring forward and conspicuously empty. His hand held the device aloft at first, but it quickly levitated up - out of his direct touch. But whatever the device showed before, it wasn't showing now. The dates were all swirling together, merging and forming a mire of time and space.
The electric force crackled off of it and rushed along the distant ceiling and across the stony walls.
Eventually, the swirling morass formed a cloud of inky nonsense, nothing comprehensible about the smashed together numbers, letters and et cetera...yet Lucky reached forward with a mad grin across his face and pressed his finger against it. As if doing so would let him chase even closer to the gods he had spoken of when he was a Greek. It occurred then to Scottie how odd it was - that they both had such an experience without directly seeing the gods in question - well, the gods he would expect.
If one could call that cephalopodic nightmare a deity.
But evidently Lucky did. As he reached further, pressing his hand into that mass emitted by the Eon Chronicle, at first Scottie thought what he was hearing was pure drivel. Utter nonsense. But then he recognized it. He recognized it as a profane prayer, and realized to his horror that he was capable of understanding the meaning even if he could not for the life of him comprehend the words; "Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Olaric Ulti-Ma wgah’nagl fhtagn...Uth'gui Cucif'ghul ch'raab..."
It was a statement of abject, horrid devotion.
And like before, the Eon Chronicle brought on a transformation. But this time, the inky darkness it conjured seemed to yawn wider, growing thick and pouring upon Lucky like he was being submerged in spilled oil. His body twisting and turning, at first Scottie thought he was watching Lucky react to and respond to this... but then he realized it was Lucky's body - distorting, cracking, snapping and reshaping in real time.
Scottie watched the flesh take on the consistency and pulsating nature of that oily ooze, hands and forearms splitting into tendrils and smaller tentacles, lashing tiny hooks at the ends. His upper body still looked at least somewhat humanoid - but that was the only thing remaining. His lower body had dissolved into a mess of tentacles emitting from a central bulb like form. Lucky's face seemed to look like a sculpture for a moment - right before his features unfurled, split apart like a flower pulling open.
His hair wavered on his constantly twitching shoulders. Empty white eyes stared, two per side of an elongated face, mouth splitting into four petal-like structures, each one lined with cruel, curved teeth.
Tall. Too tall. Scottie almost pissed himself when he saw how big this thing was. It was once Lucky, but he could recognize nothing of his friend and occasional lover in it. Two long tongues darted out of that vile maw as it snapped open and shut, one of them lined with further teeth. The tentacles moved suddenly, and Scottie - even with his physical aptitude - couldn't help but freeze. Some people fought, some people fled. Scottie froze.
The thing lifted him in the air and emitted a wheezing noise from its mouth, and then it spoke. In a voice that sounded downright cavernous, deep - a throaty, raspy heaving evident in its sound, "Scoooooooottie...Scottie Scottie Scott Santiago Rios...for all that I yearned to find expansion of the senses I have finally attained what I always yearned for. The true godhead divinity. Truer than the god of abraham, truer than Mitra or Jupiter or Enki. I am kin to the true masters of this spinning little blue orb. And I can offer this...to you."
Scottie stammered as he laid there, limp, in those cold, clammy tendrils. "Ah...ah, I---I---I---ahhhh, ahh..." He couldn't find words. He could barely scrounge together his sanity. The thing standing there before him threatened to blast away any notion of a sane and reasonable universe with the sheer fact of its existence.
"M---M---Me..." He managed to get out, his entire world his desire to escape, to run, to flee. His was a warrior people, they had fought the English, the Saxons, the French and more - and in his current state as a Viking, his instincts looked at this horror of horrors and told him "RUN - IT IS BEYOND YOU". It didn't talk like Lucky. It didn't act like him. It was like something had adapted Lucky's memories and personality, and were now acting them out.
"Mmmyes...mmmyes...", it pulled him along as it crawled along the floor on those countless tendrils. One tentacle curled around the form of the Eon Chronicle - which even now revealed its true nature in the black mist spilling from its crevices. "Lucky" promptly stated, "Another use... and you will be close to...the very Gods. You can have him. You can seize open if you want. Wrap him, bind him, rape him as you desire..."
And for a mad instant, Scottie considered it.
But as his thoughts slowly returned to him, he realized that taking Owen in that way, violating him in such a fashion, it would prove nothing but that he was capable of being meaner and uglier than Owen at his worst. And this thing...whatever Owen may have been at the start of all of this, it made him look like a fucking toy poodle by comparison. And why would he even contemplate raping Owen? At what point would anything he'd done among them come close to such an idea?
A tentacle then two prodded Scottie's face, trying to coerce an answer. The creature that had been Lucky demurred, "The Thule are generous. Do not waste---" It then paused - and the entire world slowed to a crawl as the door cracked open to the reliquary. An older woman obliviously entered the room, looking at something else as she did so.
"I was feeling peckish.
Before Scottie could even shout, one of those tendrils raced forward and - right when the woman began to scream at the sight before her, she was impaled to the doors she entered through - by one of those tendrils, razor sharp and primed at the edge. Scottie's eyes widened in horror as he watched it pull her off of the door - its four pronged mouth spreading wider open, further tongues and further teeth, all chomping and gnashing with need.
Scottie screamed as he watched the abomination devour the cleaning staff woman whole. "I'm still hungry..." It spoke as it glanced at the doors, and promptly sat Scottie back down on the floor, a sickly sweet tone to its voice, "I'll be right back. I always did love foreign food." Scottie's eyes wide, he just stared forward for a moment as he heard it slither out of the room, down the hallway, and then a distant scream of pain and horror.
Owen. Owen Owen Owen Owen Owen!
Scottie stumbled to his feet after some time spent yelling at himself to move from this state of fugue that he had landed in. His hands slipping and sliding as they gripped his sweat slick knees in the effort of dragging himself to a standing posture. After a few false starts, Scottie ran out of there through the hallways, still hearing screams in the distance. Then the occasional pop - pop - pop of gunfire. For his part however the Viking had no desire to see what blasphemies this thing answering to Lucky was visiting upon the waiting staff of Drosstein.
Not a single guard in sight. Not a one of Hartmann's men. Not even when he ran through the halls buck-naked.
Were the guards fighting that thing? Were they all out of the castle at this point? Was this all intended somehow by Hartmann?
It occurred to Scottie then and there that they hadn't even thought about the fact the door to the reliquary - despite how much Hartmann wanted the device - had been left completely unlocked. And the fact it had been put so close by to their rooms.
This was a set up.
And he, Lucky, Martin and Owen had all walked into an alcazar of agony.
***
Slam, the sound of a hefty body running right into the door and some muffled screaming on the other end that sounded vaguely familiar. Owen stirred awake - feeling better but then realizing with a sinking dread he had no idea how long he'd been asleep. His weary eyes glanced at his phone, which showed "1:36 PM". It was the dead of night. And here something was, pounding and striking and screaming into his chamber door.
Owen hoisted his backpack, reaching inside for the machete. He breathed, and walked to the door. Gripping the door knob, he breathed - the sound was not stopping from the other end. If anything it was growing more desperate, more urgent. Each strike sent Owen's heart rate spiking - and each time, he gripped his machete tighter. Deciding to rip off the bandage and see what lurked beyond, Owen swung the door wide open....
...Only to be met and promptly bowled over by a desperate, sobbing, crazed looking Scottie. The Viking was ugly-sobbing, mucus lining the top of his mouth, cheeks streaked with tears. He was slouched forward - his denuded body shaking with pure fear. There were several painful looking bruises across his arms and legs. As if he'd been gripped by something that burned him with its very touch. If Scottie noticed the burns on his body, he didn't show it.
If anything he might've been too horrified to register the pain at the moment. "O-O-Owen...Owen Owen, thank God, Owen..." The stammering went on into downright indecipherable nonsense. Scottie clenched the rug and wheezed, hacked, and let out an odd, hoarse peal of nervous laughter.
"Scottie!?" Owen eventually managed to get out, "What---What the fuck's going on? What happened out there? Where's---?"
"Don't say it!" Scottie bellowed, and glanced up from the floor, shaking and clearly wracked with trauma. "L-Lucky..." He whispered the name more softly. As if trying not to have someone hear it. "Something---Something fucking happened to Lucky in thuh---there, man! Something poured out of the Eon Chronicle. We were just playing with it, Lucky went back pretty far to like...a caveman or something? And then---then it got bad. The experience got bad the experience got bad...fuck, it was all at once. It let out this black smog, and---and Lucky wasn't Lucky any more!"
"What---what do you mean he wasn't Lucky any more?" Owen crossed his arms as he tried to figure out what was going on here. None of this made any goddamned sense. But as he glanced out the door Scottie barged in from he swore he got a strange feeling from just looking out there. Something like the way that there'd always been that strange and uncomfortable sense with this castle...but now, instead of raging just outside the walls, it was all indoors now.
And the longer that door was open, the longer he might have to confront the very embodiment of that sensation.
"The Eon Chronicle took him, and something changed him, and turned him into a thing - a thing that answers to Lucky, and has Lucky's memories, but it is NOT HIM, MAN! IT'S NOT HUMAN! NOT EVEN CLOSE!!!" Scottie shouted, looking up at a clearly worried Owen. When did that fucking skinhead start looking so...caring. It was like, he didn't even notice that Owen was leaving his life of hate - and he didn't even care to know it while it was going on.
"Alright." Owen spoke, looking out there then back at Scottie, "I'll take care of this thing Lucky turned into. Whatever it is. You stay here and stay as far away from the Eon Chronicle as possible. If that thing was involved... Well, I hate to say I told ya so."
Scottie just sat there on the bed, looking up at Owen as the young man walked out of the room. He wondered when everything had gotten so...so incredibly insane. Did it all really start when they just played around with the Chronicle? Was it always destined to end like this? Letting out a long, sad sigh, Scottie looked up in time to see the door shut. Leaving the Viking with his thoughts, his regrets - and the distinct feeling that he had doomed Lucky to ending up as that Thule abomination.
***
Owen stalked through the empty and lifeless halls of Castle Drosstein. Usually he would be able to hear the guards on patrol, or the waiting staff taking care of some duties around the castle. No longer. Now he was unable to hear much of anything. Left with just the eerie quiet of the castle and the looming fact that Lucky had turned into something truly abominable. If it had freaked out Scottie so much that it shocked him out of the state that the Eon Chronicle had put him in, that indicated he was marching into something - he'd wondered what else it could be. Wondered when the other shoe might drop.
Now he had some idea.
As he walked, he winced as he saw blood smeared on the walls, small sections of remaining human flesh on the floor. Owen steeled himself as he walked, there was something now to react to - the sheer, horrible stench. Something had taken these people and devoured them whole, ate the majority of their bodies and left only these tiny scraps and splashes of blood and viscera. The idea that the thing that had done this all had once been Lucky was something that made Owen feel less queasy and more grimly determined.
He would've been prone to collapsing, to just vomiting and running if this thing had been done by something truly inexplicable. Something utterly uncaring except in its hunger. But knowing as he did that it was Lucky, that it had once been a mortal man? It told him that perhaps things weren't as gruesomely hopeless...
But even still, fear gnawed at him from the fringes.
Walking around each turn and hallway in the castle, Owen hesitated and halted before turning, a pit of anxiety forming in his gut that around any given twist and turn he might see something truly horrible. The fact that he didn't - the fact that the castle seemed empty - it didn't help. It just built up the mystery of it, built up the horror more and more with each passing hallway. The monster did not need to directly appear to him to be horrific.
The tension was doing its job just fine.
Then he actually saw a body as he reached the branching pathway leading to the west wing of the castle. Dead - skewered through the midsection before he even had a chance to react...but not eaten. Only a look of deadly surprise on the man's face. And Owen - Owen recognized this man. Slumping to his knees by the corpse, this was one of the guards that Owen had seen. Had heard.
***
"Keep moving, boy, you look ridiculous."
***
Owen pulled himself from the memory and looked the man over. He had seen literally no other guards than this one, who had been in an argument with one of the others. The man was dressed in military fatigues and body armor, a rifle still by his side, and a pair of handguns holstered at his midsection. Whatever did this, it had so totally gotten the drop on the guy he hadn't even been able to fire a round in his own defense... Owen gulped, the reality of really, truly seeing a dead body hitting him - and he knew he couldn't just roll over and be sick.
He looked ahead darkly.
He forced himself to then look at it. Look at what had once been a person. Because if he didn't, he would be unable to handle it going forward. Owen had to steel himself, to know by looking at this guy that if he didn't do what had to be done in the here and now, that this would happen again.
More and more, and it had already. People already disadvantaged and taken in by a madman were used as monster food here.
Wincing, Owen knew what he was about to do was going to be in rather poor taste, for sure, but he needed this military attire more than the dead guy did. Solemnly and with utter resignation, Owen stripped the corpse down and began to put on the military gear the guy had left behind. Strapping on and tightening the body armor and fatigues over his own shirt, the pants, and likewise, he pulled on a blood-stained headband across his forehead, glaring forward.
And he started looking through the guy's belongings. Some pretty good ordinance here. Two hand guns, a rifle to be strapped over the shoulder, and three small, oval shaped devices with pins that---holy shit, were those grenades? Owen also pocketed a lighter from the guy's pocket, and looked through his wallet. "Edmund Dunst...Edmund Dunst..." Looking through the belongings, he seemed like a boiler plate fascist. Some indications of where he came from...but then Owen found something.
In a small chamber near the back of the wallet, he found a different identification card. And a different indication of who he was, and where he came from. "So...wait, your name was actually...Dieter Kaulitz..." In that secret part of the wallet, his eyes widened as he saw the big thing - the explanation for why this guy was probably left behind to rot and die. "Holy shit, holy shit, this guy was German Intelligence. I'm guessing he was investigating Hartmann, got found out, and was left here to be monster chow."
"But he wasn't eaten..." Owen got up, and decided to keep going. His backpack kept over his shoulder, holstering his new rifle and making sure it was loaded, Owen prowled down the hallway. Training it forward, to readily aim at anything he saw. Owen was nervous, and pretty fresh to guns, but it was easy enough to find the hammer, to locate where he needed to reload. Maybe it was the adrenaline working for him that lent him such a time.
He thought he heard something as he crossed toward the grand hall. A moan.
Keeping the gun ready and primed, Owen charged in and saw a severely injured Rania clutching her arm, kneeling by one of the suits of armor. He immediately ran to check on her, "Rania? What the hell happened here? Who did all of this!?" Seeing the lacerations on her arm and shoulder, Owen set his rifle down and took out some bandages and gauze from his backpack - he was already feeling good about choosing to take these kinds of supplies.
"O-Owen...?" She glanced at him, looking battered from whatever happened. "It---It came out of nowhere. Beyond anything I'd ever seen in all my worst nightmares. It ate man after man, gorging on them like a dog and with the pitilessness of a vulture. Allah, Owen, it was ravenous..."
She glanced at his rifle, "You need to know...it---I tried to fight it off. When I heard it attacking the others. I took whatever I could. I grabbed the welding equipment I used for the pipes. It recoiled when I burnt it, lashed me with its tendrils - but left me alive. It fled from me, toward the---the dining hall - it must---must still hunger..." The whole time, Owen nodded diligently, realizing as he did that whatever this thing Lucky had become was - it didn't much care for fire.
Once he was sure her wounds were dressed well enough, Owen stood up and sighed, "I'm...sorry. This thing is the product of the Eon Chronicle, that we---we unthinkingly brought here like a bunch of fucking clueless schweine leading ourselves and others to the slaughter!" He grit his teeth and looked away, "I---I have to take care of this. Resolve all of this."
"Owen...?" Rania started.
"Yeah?"
"Kick. Its. Oily. Ass." Rania started toward the stairs, and said, "I'll keep myself up there...probably can't help in any firefight. But if you need anything, just---shout my name, and I will do my best with the situation."
Breathing, Owen stood back up and watched her head up the stairs. So he had a destination and a basic idea of what this thing could do and also what its weakness likely was. Didn't make him too much less nervous, owing to the fact Lucky had done all this to all these innocent people, but it made him feel like he had a shot at dealing with this. Lucky was his friend, and in his present state it fell to Owen to put him down.
Hoisting his rifle, Owen started down the route that Rania had mentioned.
As Rania stood by the stairs and the mechanism for the chandelier, she began to utter prayer; "Oh Allah protect me...protect Owen from the front, from behind, from the right and left, and from above. And I seek refuge in You from being taken unaware...from beneath."
***
Owen made his way toward the dining hall, the entire way stained with even more blood than in the rest of the castle, and fresher, too. The creature Lucky had become was recent in its move here. Owen steeled himself, but even trying to do so ill prepared him for the monstrosity he saw in the center of the dining hall. The tables had been smashed to smithereens, the entire room darkened from shattered lights, and there, crouched in the center was what had once been Lucky.
It was a thing of utter horror. Its lower body squelched and squirmed, looking for all intents and purposes like a mass of tentacles. The upper body had a vaguely humanoid appearance that suggested a former human status, but that was the only thing Owen could see that could really tell him that this was ever a mortal man. Its head was elongated, the mouth divided into four mandibles. Empty white eyes two by each side.
It knelt by the gutted form of the cook Owen had talked to mere hours earlier, devouring his innards with a gross intensity. But he could see in the scars on its shoulder and arm, and on some of those tendrils that this was not an immortal thing. This was not a deity ascended from mortal skin. This was a creature that could burn, bleed, scar and - going off of that trajectory, die. If it could bleed, it could die.
As soon as he stepped inside of the dining hall, Owen grit his teeth as he saw it twist its head almost one hundred and eighty degrees on its neck, glancing around. It intoned in a mockingly jovial tone, "Fee...Fie...Foe...Fum...I smell the bones of an English Neo-Nazi who doesn't know when---when to leave well enough alone. I'd think you'd be happy, Owen, with so many dead minorities. Did ya know the cook was a fag? Bet that makes his de---"
Lucky's malformed head exploded as Owen blasted a hole right through it in one shot with his rifle, the young man's expression utterly livid. "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!! You don't KNOW me any more!" As Lucky squirmed and tried to reform, Owen watching the creature's head reforming in real time, he put several more rounds through it - only to see the head still reforming.
Owen took a step back, still training the rifle on it.
"So...typically Owen. Brutal and simple, to the point...and so utterly stupid. But I suppose I should have Aryan to eat tonight too, to balance my meal." One tentacle raised...
Owen by sheer instinct leaped out of the way, rolling to the side as the tendril crashed against the floor and ripped a hole through tile. Seeing that he couldn't exactly win a fire fight with this thing with rifle rounds, he took off - knowing there was a place he could probably go for some heavier ordinance. But as he ran he could hear the tendrils lurching forward, trying to catch him.
He could hear that hungry thing crawling behind him, surging up through the doors and the hallway after him. Adrenaline and pure fighting response carried Owen through, and he fired at any tendrils he saw trying to close in on him. The only thing in his world now was the fight, the exact details and any dangers to his wellbeing. A lethal sort of focus coming over him. He could see and hear more precisely in this state. It was a sensation not foreign to him.
The young skinhead had been in fights before. Been in dangerous fights. This was like that, except instead of counter-protestors calling out his bullshit, Owen was fighting a horrific Thule abomination. As he crested a corner, he heard it crawling over anything in its path. Seeing a knight's suit of armor in the path, an idea came to be in his head. A crazed smile crossing his face briefly - realizing he didn't just need to run.
Fire hurt this thing. He knew that from Rania. He crossed the knight's armor. He listened. Heard the thing surging up behind him, closer and closer. Heard its tendrils touching the knight's armor. Measured the distance...and he took out a grenade. Tossed it over his shoulder into the direction of the armor. Click. Click. Click. Clack.
The creature intoned as it lurched over the grenade, "I will drink every drop of marrow from your bones after this chase! Peel every inch of that toned muscula---" It was interrupted by the fiery explosion of the grenade - and it emitted a keening screech of utter pain as it fell over itself, body squelching and squirming on the floor, the fire from the grenade's explosion lingering on its body. It burnt - it burnt like a pool of oil.
Owen however could see it still starting to stitch itself together, knowing he couldn't very well kill it with just his supply of grenades. He still needed more powerful ordinance.
He kept running ahead, dimly aware of his muscles aching - but in his current state he couldn't heed them. He needed to run, to fight, to slay the monstrosity. Before long he could hear it trying to keep up with him, further behind now. But it was furious now and it gave up on trying to hide its approach or obstruct how it moved. It was lurching after him, and catching up - after all, it was a monster and Owen was just a young man.
But a very desperate, surprisingly cunning and capable young man. He could smell it in the air. The lingering stench of smoke. The grenade had hurt it.
Owen was headed up the eastern wing of the castle, on the route toward the armory near Hartmann's office. Hopefully, he hadn't cleared everything out. With his legs carrying him, Owen could hear the creature starting to lick at his heels again with haphazard strikes from its tendrils. Its fury clouding its aim - it had been more dangerous when it was less angry. Now it was just throwing whatever it could at him. Not even speaking, just snarling and gnashing its nightmarish teeth.
Eager to taste blood.
Taking out another grenade, Owen knew he needed to make these count. He had two now. He had to be sure they'd last him until he got to the armory. There was a path going up from this end of the castle toward the central tower. Owen just kept running, turning quickly around every twist in the path and trying to buy himself more time. He could hear it behind him, the thing that wanted his blood.
Eventually, it was getting too close - coming up on him too fast...so he readied one of his grenades. And this time as he tossed it, the grenade struck the creature over the head. Owen ducked under a swing from a tendril, and grinned as he heard another pealing shriek from it upon the grenade exploding just behind its bulbous, hideous head.
But the young man couldn't stop to feel any degree of satisfaction in burning the thing again. He had to keep going. He barged through doors, threw them shut behind him, and bolted shut any with even the slightest degree of a lock system set up. Anything to keep that monster busy - keep it as far off from him as possible. But as he ran further and further up, feeling the same sensation again of the castle seeming to be further down in the abyss the further up he ran Owen knew he would likely need to deal with another monster all the same.
Running down the hallway, leaping up two stairs at a time, he almost jumped as he heard the door he had barred further down starting to rip off its hinges. In this tight corridor heading upward, he knew this was another chance he wouldn't get often. He heard it all the way down there, clawing - ripping - tearing the door, using it as a proxy for everything it wanted to do to Owen, to Martin, to anyone who had so wounded it and its newly formed heinous ego.
Pulling the pin from his last grenade, he threw it over his shoulder down the stairs...
And was rewarded by another peal of shrieking pain as the creature thrashed around - the door itself catching fire and hopefully stalling it more as Owen ran for the destination. The destination! He was closing in, he could see the office of Hartmann and the armory---which, at a closer inspection, had a modern day lock and key set up - a spot for a keycard.
"Dammit! Dammit fucking dammit! And the guy from downstairs didn't even have..." He breathed.
Wincing, Owen took up his rifle from across his shoulder, and tried to reload...only to be bitterly disappointed to see it was empty.
Shaking his head, Owen put the weapon over his shoulder again.
The door to Hartmann's office swung open as the young man walked inside. Eyes glaring forward, at the architect of all this misery. Standing right by his window, swung open and overlooking the town, was Bruno Hartmann, a crazed smile on his face as he listened to...something. Was he experiencing something Owen couldn't immediately see? "You have seen the brilliance of the creature of Thule, yes?"
"I've seen a degenerate abomination, if that's what you're asking." Owen retorted.
"It is a creature of Thule! It is our ancestor! Our most holy and revered predecessor! Heinrich Himmler spoke the truth when he spoke of ancient Aryans in the far north! He only failed to know where, and how far down he would need to go!" Hartmann gesticulated wildly as he spoke, and Owen put a hand on one of the handguns at his waist.
It was clear enough to Owen that this man was a complete and utter fanatic. An old believer and every bit as monstrous as the people whom Owen once attached such reverence to himself. Arm tensing as he watched Hartmann make another declaration;
"Our great organization arose out of the dust of that disastrous world war! We - and the Thule! Our blessed ancestors, our great predecessors, we acquired the secret weapons and power of the ancient world from them. We would divide the world between us, a world of flesh, and oil, and blood and steel. Our bright red banner will once again fly high - and this time, it will fly above Washington, above Tokyo, above Seoul. EVERY NATION WILL BOW AT THE KNEE!!"
"You're a madman. You're a madman, and this stops here." Owen stated defiantly.
"I...am completely disappointed." Hartmann glanced out the window, and Owen gripped his gun, ready.
"You could have been so much MORE! You could have just stayed in your room, allowed the Thule to feast, and exited this with a job with a salary in the millions! I could have given you everything you desire! The Iron Cross, for bravery and excellence! You were to be my man on the internet!" Hartmann started to turn - to try and reach for something on his desk. "Alas! You were too given to the modern age, and thus---"
And Owen didn't let him get there.
A single gunshot rang out. A blooming red hole seeping thick blood and grey matter. Hartmann stumbled - did not even let out any cry of pain or injury - and fell backward. He fell indeed - fell out the open window and if the shot to the head hadn't killed him, the fall from such a great height, from which he had so enjoyed playing god...that most certainly would. Great pride begets a great fall. And no fall was more complete and total that night than that of the would-be lordling Bruno Hartmann.
Owen, holding the smoking gun, stood there, breathing heavily. It wasn't easy to just snap kill a guy. And it made him feel a little sick inside - but he knew, knew it had to be done. Hartmann was the source of all the things that had gone wrong in this expedition. And he planned, going by what he said, to do so much worse to the world at large.
"Fuck---Fuck you," Owen muttered as he looked at the spot where Hartmann had fell, "Fuck you and I hope the fall killed you."
He then hurried and poked through the material on Hartmann's desk. Numerous papers and folders and files, all of which he'd have to look through later - if - no, WHEN he survived all of this. And at the bottom of Hartmann's desk, he found a keycard - a keycard that had to be for the door to the armory.
Owen hurried along - and it was good that he did so, as he heard the squelching, squirming noise of the creature finally starting to catch up with him. Darting down the hallway to the armory door, Owen opened the armory doors up after a few tries - hearing the creature closing in. Knowing he didn't have much time.
Owen darted inside, seeing tendrils already extending after him, closing in and one of them wrapping around his wrist as he entered the armory. He could smell something burning, and took action quick as possible. Grabbing the doors to the armory, he swung them shut - right on the wretched tendrils still trying to grip at him.
The door slammed shut and severed the tendrils on impact, which immediately went limp and dropped from him. Owen watched the severed limbs squirm around on the floor once separated from the creature that had so utilized them...and then melted into a liquid consistency.
Nodding, Owen regarded the armory before him, hearing the creature pounding on the door just behind him. Trying to force it down as it had with most other doors, only to find this one all the more hardy than the others. And despite himself, and with all that he'd seen so far, Owen's mouth showed an awkward, somewhat dorky grin as he took in the exact scope of what Hartmann's conspiracy was working with here. Standing there in the armory, Owen saw VERY ample ordinance.
Many more grenades, different shells for his rifle across his shoulder, and...holy shit. Holy shit. What really made him feel a groundswell of hope was what was front and center amidst all this ammo. A large, black and silver decorated weapon to be mounted on the shoulder, five slender shells to use - it was a goddamned missile launcher. A fucking missile launcher, with corresponding ammo.
Owen suited up with a bit more body armor, preemptively put some ear protection in his ears, grabbed some more ammo for his rifle out of the ammunition for the belt of his military gear, and hoisted the missile launcher over his shoulder, keeping its ammo in a container over his free shoulder. He was carrying a lot, but he didn't even feel how heavy it all was yet. Owen turned to face the increasingly battered armory door, hearing the creature starting to force its way through, starting to batter even this mighty door down. "...Groovy. Let's fucking go."
When the creature forced the armory door down, it paused - like some sort of deer in the headlights despite itself as it registered Owen standing there holding a missile launcher over his shoulder. The thing glanced at Owen's new acquisition, and despite how alien it had become - in spite of how eldritch and hateful Lucky had turned, in that barely humanoid face Owen could see something. A realization, an emotion, a response.
He could see something in that thing's look that gave him a spike of pure dopamine.
Owen could recognize the fucking fear in its miserable face.
The missile fired with a loud burst that made Owen glad he went the extra mile of protecting his ears. The monster tried to move, only to get blown backward with a keening scream that was quickly overwhelmed by the explosion from Owen's missile launcher. The explosion ALSO took out several of the windows in the hallway, and almost knocked the creature out of the hall into a freefall akin to the one suffered by its ally not too long ago.
Owen ran by, watching the creature drag itself after him, seeing it was slowing.
He reloaded the missile launcher as he and the creature finally seemed to be on an even keel. Another round from the launcher fired - and another loud, booming explosion.
The people from the castle-town would be able to look up from their houses and see Castle Drosstein further up - and see numerous explosions wracking the castle, blasting holes in the walls as Owen charged down the castle hallways - the whole way making every effort with his missile launcher and grenades to put an end to the monster that had been his friend. Whole sections of castle hallways obliterated, and the sheer disruption even seemed to set the entire morose atmosphere of the castle to rout.
Meanwhile in the castle, the myriad explosions managed to wake someone up that had been poisoned into a fitful slumber. His soldierly instincts telling him to move toward the sounds of the action going on.
And a concerned Scottie, even though he knew what Owen told him - he couldn't help but feel a dragging sensation toward what was going on.
But as Owen charged down the castle halls, approaching where he'd started everything in here, the grand hall, he realized as he heard the creature starting to slowly stitch itself back together even after yet another round from something as mighty as the missile launcher that it was still not dead yet. Still. Even with all this weaponry at his disposal - and the creature just fucking refused to properly perish.
Stalking into the grand hall, Owen kept his wits about him - knowing that with the way this creature was, it could approach him from just about any angle. There had to be a way here to take it out permanently. He couldn't just keep fighting it forever - he had a limited quantity of ammo on his person. Two more shots with the missile launcher, and four grenades left - and as had been shown the rest of his time running back down here, those weapons just...didn't...kill it!
Owen felt what he initially thought was sweat beading on his forehead, but then, when he went to feel it, he saw to his dawning horror that the substance was not sweat - it was the drip drip drop of oily---!
The creature was upon him from above in an instant.
The thing hoisted Owen above it in its tendrils, only his military gear sparing his flesh from the burning effects of the creature's touch, and even that was a limited time thing. He screamed in panic as it waved him around in the air, not able to bring his arm to his shoulder to use his missile launcher now. The abomination looked up at Owen, and its many lower body tendrils extended as it poised itself at the center of the room.
Pinning Owen at the hall leading toward the west wing, what had once been Lucky panted and chuckled darkly, "You've caused---you've caused me quite a lot of pain and humiliation tonight, Owen Bolton. To think, ascended to the ranks of the true master race of this damned spinning blue ball and what? I'm given such trouble by some up-jumped street punk who's only tough because daddy never loved him enough." It tightened its grip, and Owen refused to make any more sound. His missile launcher rested on the floor at his side.
He wouldn't give it the pleasure. He knew from experience it was a consummate sadist. All of Lucky's enjoyment of his drug highs transferred into this thing's hunger and enjoyment of hurting humans.
The creature evidently decided to continue talking, all the while slowly continuing to try and flatten Owen under the crush of its tentacles; "I'd like to be able to say you could very well have joined us, but I think our blessed, most holy Eon Chronicle could see you were always more trouble than you were worth."
Its multi-part jaws arrayed in something Owen guessed was a grin of pure, horrid glee.
"So I want you to die tonight knowing that I will find every single person you have ever loved. Every single person you called precious to you at one point or another, I will harvest their names and locations from your wretched little brain, and I will kill them all. I will burn their houses, I will slaughter their families and pets. All will be naught but pain because of the work you have undertaken tonight. Pain - constant, continuous, all they will kno---"
Suddenly the creature wailed in pain and its limbs holding Owen to the wall started to loosen their grip.
It turned its head, eyes wild with rage and hate, and they looked upon the determined, bold features of Martin Hollingswerth. Eyes focused forward, body covered head to toe in the heavy metallic armor of a gothic era knight of Germany, and holding a freshly Thule blood covered halberd - the blade burning bright in the dead of the night with ignited oil covering the blade. The halberd had parted one of the Lucky-thing's tentacle legs, the stump bleeding and bubbling.
"Hey, you fucking eldritch seafood surprise," Martin stated, fury written through his voice, "Get your grubby tentacles off of Owen."
Taking its attention off of Owen for that most important of moments, the monstrosity turned its attention to Martin.
It rushed him down with its tentacles, which all struck home - but were halted from actually touching Martin by the thick iron armor he was covered in. Muscles straining from both the heavy armor and the impacts, Martin struck the creature with several more impaling blows from the halberd, grinning under the helmet as he felt the creature's body giving under the assault. His instincts were singing, his body moved like this was all natural to him.
He was trained as a Legionnaire in this new state he was in, and he made use of that. To use whatever he had on hand to damage the foe. And much as it hurt him, his foe right now was his former friend Lucky. He'd arrived while the fight was still proceeding down the castle, and met a scared young woman with a lot of gauze and bandages on her arm - who told him what was going on, what was going down with Owen, and how to hurt the monster that Lucky had become.
He didn't exactly have a missile launcher or grenades.
What he did have was Rania's resources, some cooking oil, a lighter, and a halberd.
Martin severed numerous more tendrils even as he felt the beating he was taking intensify. It was devoting more and more resources from its central mass to taking him on as opposed to making sure it had pinned Owen to the wall. His muscles were feeling tight, strained and moreso with every move he took in this armor. It was protecting him from Lucky, yes, but it was also heavy, heavier than anything he'd ever worn before. And both wearing it AND carrying the halberd was straining him beyond his ability...
But he pushed on, because he knew Owen needed it, and needed the help.
Owen watched from his spot on the top of the entry area to the wing, finally feeling his tiredness and pain from all of the night catching up to him - watching Lucky readily taking glee in pounding the armored form of Martin. By now, the pinning tendrils were largely nominal, and his foe's resources had been spent elsewhere - on trying to keep Martin off of him and beat him down. Ware down the armored foe. I can't stop now, I can't stop ever at this rate. I have to fight through this, I HAVE to find a way to kill this fucker...! I can't just let him pin me to the wall and watch him kill Martin...!
Then he realized something.
The Thule monster burnt like oil. The weapon Martin was wielding was just a superheated blade, at the end of the day, and despite that it carved through this thing like nothing... Inspiration hit Owen all at once. He managed, through the distraction that Martin provided, to reach down and grab his machete with one hand, and his lighter with the other, flourishing the blade through the air, eyes wild with manic energy.
...and he carved his machete into the flesh of the monstrous Thule creature, staining it black immediately. Drawing the blade back out, he lit the blade aflame with his lighter and watched it surge with hot yellow flames - which he quickly plunged into the monster's tentacles holding him there even as it felt like his fingers burned from the heat.
The tendrils squirmed, quivered and collapsed around him, melting away and burning as he severed the long limbs.
Owen grabbed the missile launcher again, bringing it up to his shoulder as he saw the creature crushing Martin's armored form slowly under its grip - evidently taking glee in trying to crush him under its grip as slowly and painfully as possible. To spitefully make that armor his tomb. But feeling that pain and looking back over, it saw Owen holding the missile launcher and aiming it seemingly at the monster.
"Oh, by all means!" It mocked him, "You have demonstrated aptly well that none of your human weapons can finish the job on me tonight. For all their might, they can do as little as any of the humans who forged them. Go on then - inflict just a bit more pain on me, and I will return the favor a thousandfold on you as long as I wish it. You will know in that moment I am the true---"
Owen fired - but not at Lucky. A flash of realization hit him. He remembered where he was. He remembered all the facts about the grand hall. Where he was standing. Where Lucky was standing. He fired up, high, and at a very specific point in the ceiling. He looked down just after firing and heard the explosion distantly above him.
"You missed, you stupid, worthless little hu---ma---" By the time Lucky realized the enormous, falling shadow hanging over him and growing by the moment, it was entirely too late even with his newly capable body. The massive hanging chandelier, the underside full of dangling, decorative but sharp blades - all fell at once as Lucky had started raising a tentacle up from his right to swing at Owen again - and in fact, that - and most of the others in that side, were severed into multiple pieces by the impact.
What had once been Lucky squirmed, squealed and let loose loud bellows of pain - the enormous central blade of the chandelier had bisected the abomination's central mass, its milky internal organs oozing with black blood and ooze. Even its heart was visible through the bisection - a vile, mutated somewhat humanoid heart connected to multiple internal biological cables.
Owen knew that if he took no further action here it would just regenerate again, so he - upon seeing that his plan worked trusted the woman that he had helped and collaborated with. "RANIA!!!!!" Owen screamed at the top of his lungs. Hoping she had stayed around, kept her word and made to help him in the face of his hour of need.
And indeed, she had.
Rania stood by the mechanism designed to control that central chandelier and she stated in a grim tone, "Allah, may your holy fire cleanse the shit outta this horrible monster and burn it to fucking ashes!!!" She then pressed a button she knew all too well from her time as cleaning and housework staff under Bruno Hartmann - turning on the fire displays of the chandelier.
Across the chandelier, numerous rectangular holes opened up across the metallic surfaces. What had been Lucky in fact looked directly into one of these very rectangular holes, looking right into the mechanism as the fire surged up from within the chandelier. All at once, the downed chandelier was engulfed in a fiery aurora of power and fury. The flames grew with the apt accelerant provided immediately, spreading through and incinerating everything within and without the Thule monster.
It barely had the time for one last shriek of pain as it thrashed, as its very tainted lungs were burnt away. The creature's form was initially still distinct, but the fact it was derived of oil meant that before long the flames that claimed it completely burnt away everything that had once been Lucky. Eliminating the monstrosity that had devoured so many people and sadistically threatened the lives of the survivors, and leaving Owen, Martin and Rania standing there watching the flailing thing dissolve away.
Lucky was completely gone. Not even enough left of what had once been his body to bury.
Owen fell on his ass, finally feeling the exertion of the night catching up to him. He managed to pull himself back up, balancing on the architecture at the edges of that long walkway.
Martin groaned and wavered between consciousness and unconsciousness, peeling off his iron helmet and breathing.
Rania knelt by the mechanism, and breathed. Her arm still hurt, she still saw her friends being eaten in her mind's eye, but she felt better - because she knew that they had been avenged. Their spirits could rest in power, knowing that the thing that had killed them so callously had met its end in flame.
Then Scottie ambled in.
The Viking, body covered in sweat and eyes wild, carried with him the Eon Chronicle.
"S-Scottie? Scottie what are you---?" Owen shouted, still tired, and nowhere near feeling capable to run down there and confront Scottie - who looked like he was 3/4s of the way into a mental crisis of some kind.
"It---It CANNOT go on, Owen! It can't! It needs to go! It needs to go back!" Scottie screamed at the top of his lungs and took off with the Eon Chronicle, the smoke emitting from the ancient, cursed machine starting to resemble various profane, horrific faces as the Viking ran away from his friends and associates - unable to face them. Knowing and or feeling as he did that the only reason Lucky had changed, that Lucky had become that horrifying thing he had - was because he had been so eager to play with it. Egged Lucky on as he did.
And now, Lucky was dead. And Scottie felt like he couldn't look Owen in the eye. Couldn't look that Libyan woman in the eye, with all the horrors Lucky had visited on her and her friends. Let alone Martin.
As he ran out on to the front lawn of the castle, further down on to that long road above the long coasts of the castle-town, Scottie readied his right arm like he was throwing a grand discus. He swore he could hear something screaming in the distance, almost able to be heard. Was it his friends shouting for him from the distance? Or was it the monstrous creators of the Eon Chronicle, baying for blood but simultaneously begging him to reconsider - to be their newest man. To let them do unto him as they did unto Lucky...
Scottie let out a primal scream of rage as he threw the Eon Chronicle with all his strength - watching the dismal, vile sphere fly far and disappear into the waves, churning on the coast. He could only hope that the waves and cascading forces of the ocean battered that horrible thing to pieces.
And then Scottie turned, looking at Owen. Standing there, balancing against the doorway. Watching him. Looking blearily after him. Watching Scottie standing there across the front lawn of that place. Tears streaming down Scottie's face as he finally felt liberated - but still so utterly conflicted. So completely destroyed by the night's events. He turned, and disappeared into the long path down from Castle Drosstein. Where did Scottie intend to go? He hadn't even decided yet. He had no idea what his future held - only that it just...was not here.
Was not with the friends he felt like he betrayed. Was not with jeopardizing them with the fact he was 1 transformation away from being twisted mentally first, and then with another, twisted physically into a monster that would torture, devour and kill. Scottie couldn't face them - not now.
Owen watched him run away, and turned back in toward the castle. He walked by Martin's exhausted form, lying there on the ground, slowly prying off the dented and burnt armored pieces of that gothic period armor. Martin looked his way as Owen walked by, "So...everything's done then? Hartmann?"
"Dead. I shot him through the skull, and for good measure, he went tumbling out a fuckin' window all the way up there." The skinhead shook his head though and stated, "He---He wasn't all, though. He said as much, in that crazy state he was in. Spilled how he was part of something bigger. Sounded like a conspiracy of other fuckheads like himself, willingly trying to work with those...those Thule things."
"This...this has been such, such a crazy fucking night." Martin groaned, and once he'd pried off the last piece of armor, he just fell right back asleep on the floor of Castle Drosstein. All while the bonfire of the chandelier burned on. A pillar of fire at the center of the room that could serve as a gravestone.
Rania, meanwhile, more thoroughly went to dress her wounds, but she knew as she did so that she couldn't just go back to anything like a normal life now. What happened tonight, happened. And she would have to change her life around to deal with the fact her boss had died trying to make a deal with a horrific thing from beyond.
Owen went ahead back up to Hartmann's office, running a hand over his forehead. Fuck, he was gonna sleep like nobody's business tonight - but first he needed to figure out what was up. He needed to look through all that stuff he didn't have the time for earlier due to fighting that Thule. Poking through the documents in Hartmann's desk, Owen intoned;
"The projects are underway - our most reliable and capable group of treasure hunters remain the best possible group for the plan to utilize the Thule. We must make haste, I suspect that German intelligence has started to catch on to the nature of our plans if not the exact details. They suspect we want to overthrow this illegitimate republic and institute the rise of our great Fourth Reich..." Owen grimaced as he realized this meant the conspiracy both existed and had a good number of people - such that Hartmann was reporting to someone else. "We must find and utilize one of the keys left behind by the Paranormal Division Kuthbert Albrecht and his men. I strongly suspect that adversarial developments were underway at Atlantis Haus, in a room out of view of the public."
That name. Owen winced, hearing it. His mother's last name was Albrecht - she'd been a German immigrant, who'd thought his dad was just...a wonderful guy to make a family with. Her mistake. Owen breathed and sank into Hartmann's seat. The old fuck had been up to his nose in plots. He was honestly amazed Hartmann could even walk straight.
He saw notes in there, communiques between Hartmann and---fuck.
There was a reason Owen had been hired at all. The guys had had some trouble with a group of rival, much more brutish treasure hunters who called themselves the so called "Red Rabbit Society". So named for the mask they wore, to obscure their identity due to the much more illegal activities and scummy behavior they undertook. They were by far more likely to steal, rob and burglarize from living people in case they wanted something, and were entirely willing to beat down anyone who got in their way in the areas they went out to.
Trouble with them largely stopped when Owen showed up - but it looked like they'd instead been diverted into working for Hartmann too. They seemed to be his clean up crew. If something had gone wrong, or if the History Hunters had been recalcitrant about handing over the Eon Chronicle - then it looked like going by these letters that the Rabbits were supposed to attack them and take the device to deliver to Hartmann.
Letting out a long, tired sigh, Owen got up and headed back down. It was what? 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning? Something like that? Maybe even later? He'd been fighting for much of his early morning. His vision looked blurry and his head hurt. "I---I gotta get some sleep, then I can decide what to do from tomorrow on." Returning to the west wing of the castle with Martin's unconscious body slung over his shoulder, Owen put Martin on a bed, then fell to sleep on another - almost as soon as his head hit the covers.
And despite his earlier feelings about the castle, now that the architect of the malevolence and his active agent were both dead, and the Eon Chronicle itself was vanished beneath the waves... Owen honestly felt more like he could actually sleep.
***
By the next morning, Owen, Martin and Rania proceeded down the long road down from the castle - Rania having changed her bandages in the morning. Owen for his part still carried his Thule Blood Stained Machete, his rifle, two handguns, and remaining grenades. After all, you never know when you might need something like that these days.
All told, they went right to the van. Not chancing anything by looking into the inn that the Hunters had stayed in, knowing the people there worked for Hartmann - and thus, likely also worked for whatever society Hartmann was a member of. Martin was still looking groggy and rather out of it. He honestly couldn't believe what had happened last night - he wanted to believe it was just all a dream. All an insane, insane dream.
He was definitely, thus, in no state to be driving. And Rania was injured on her arm. She stepped into the back of the van as Martin laid there in the passenger seat. Ceding the right to drive to Owen. And for his part, Owen was just staring forward the entire time, realizing that any veneer of normalcy was pretty much gone at this point. He'd successfully left the life of miserable Neo-Nazism that had defined him for years, but he had left it into a new, complicated life full of strange things he didn't know how to evaluate.
Climbing into the driver's seat, Owen numbly sat there for about a minute until Rania spoke up, "Owen? You---gonna drive?"
"Yeah, yeah, I will - I will." Owen responded and started driving away from Drosstein. Away from that eerie castle-town that was starting to see more sun than it had in a long, long time, and away from that castle that had been the site of so much strife. Owen just stared forward as he drove out into the German countryside, along the roads. Focusing at least initially on the divider lines on the road. Just keep counting divider lines.
"What...?" Owen chuckled awkwardly.
"Where are we going, Owen?" Rania asked, looking at him. "You saw so much about what was going on."
"Where are we going...?" Owen shook his head, realizing he WOULD need to think about where they were all going with this. They certainly couldn't all just go home. From here on, they had destinations - well beyond what they usually had before.
---------------
In the nearby restored wooded area, Scottie finally stopped running. He felt curiously free out here, finally feeling like he'd put enough distance. He'd honestly entered some strange sort of fugue - but was it really anything but understandable? He looked around, unfamiliar with his surroundings. He would need to find his way forward - and he would need to do so alone, for now. In a place and path that left him separate from the people he called friends.