Matt turned to look back at the gates. Something blood red was emerging like a mountain of pulsating muscle. Once past the barrier, it shot forward, colliding with column of black greasy flesh in the center of the dark ocean. The shockwave of the impact knocked Matt and Adira forward off their feet, and they both rolled to look back.

Xastur had wrapped itself around its brother, and, like a giant fist, it squeezed.

“Xastur will not let Cthulhu rise. It knows it is not their time,” Matt said.

The thing that had emerged from behind the red gates extended out and around the mass of Cthulhu, but its end was still lost somewhere deep inside the city of R’lyeh. Matt brought his hands up to his head to cover his ears, as there came a wailing from the million mouths, jaws, beaks and toothless maws that had formed across the dark mass of Cthulhu.

Matt looked at his watch. “Oh God, the convergence is concluding. We need to be out of here, or we’re staying.”

“Then see you at the top, Professor.” Adira started to sprint along the shoreline. Matt followed, both of them heading back to the cave mouth they had used to enter Cthulhu’s realm.

They still needed to weave around all manner of hideous creatures that poured forth from the caves – there came the Father’s priests, the shaven-headed humanoids, also stick-like insectoid things with grinning human faces. There were slithering worms with spiked fangs and sides dotted with black eyes, skinless centipedes with running sores, and lumps of muscled flesh that hopped on massive elephantine stumps. All continued to pour back into the core of their master.

The screams of rage rose, and chancing a look back again, Matt saw that the huge column had begun to be dragged from the ceiling, and was being slowly tugged toward the massive gates of R’lyeh.

Finally, from out of the darkness above them appeared the head of the beast. Matt felt an animal fear shoot through his body at the vision of the monstrous ancient being. The Al Azif’s description was accurate, but still could never fully describe the horror that Matt witnessed. He had impressions of an octopus, a dragon, and even a human caricature with a pulpy, tentacled head surmounting a grotesque and scaly body. The face, or the front of the being, carried a huge central lidless eye surrounded by dozens of smaller black orbs, and then around these were masses of feelers. The thought of their world ever having something like this on its surface threatened Matt’s sanity.

Cthulhu emanated pure evil, and perhaps its slumbering dreams had touched humankind ever since he had crawled from the swamps and stood on hind legs. It had always been there, the evil presence influencing and haunting us – Satan, Diablo, Lucifer, Baal, Cthulhu – they were all the one being…and it was real.

Cthulhu arched down. Its flailing tentacles, thicker than city blocks, bloomed apart to reveal a huge beak that it tried to bury in the flesh of its brother. Whipping tentacles smashed rock from the walls, and specks fell from its body – the servants clinging to its skin were being shaken free like fleas from a dog.