The thing had a name once. Probably. Whatever it was, it wasn't worth remembering- not by the woman standing in front of it, nor the author, and certainly not by me.
What it did have was a weapon. A big one. Some kind of cleaver the size of a dining table, poised for a horizontal swipe with both arms and every ounce of whatever passed for conviction in its species. It had been winding the thing up for the better part of three seconds, which was about two and a half seconds longer than it needed to.
The woman before it hadn't moved. Hadn't flinched. Hadn't even looked up from whatever thought currently occupied the real estate behind her eyes. Silver hair framing a face carved from casual indifference, she simply stood there with her hands in her coat pockets while this cleaver a family of six could comfortably eat off of came down at her skull.
"Broken Calculator."
She said it the way someone answers a stranger when they asked "what time is it?".
A line appeared beneath the creature's feet, or rather a platform. White, clean, deliberate, almost polite in how it manifested. Below the line, a zero materialized. Just sitting there. Unassuming. Matching the platform's color.
The cleaver stopped mid-swing.
*THUD!*
Both arms shot straight up into the air as the weapon lands on the floor.
And then it screamed. Not a battle cry. Not a death rattle. A pained, horrid, scream of anguish- the kind that only gets unlocked when something goes so catastrophically, fundamentally wrong that the body skips grief entirely and goes straight to broadcasting it.
That thing's arms shooting up wasn't a subversion for some kind of mental mind game. It was reaching to the heavens. Like paper sent into an incinerator, it began turning into ash, pixel by pixel, from the feet upward. All while it continued screaming at full volume the entire time.
The ash that followed didn't even get a eulogy. It too disappeared. That sorrowful outcry echoing until the very last particle disintegrated.
Over with the woman who'd just cast that atrocity of a spell- or whatever she did there:
The woman's stride carried her straight through the space the creature had occupied, her coat barely shifting as she passed the last wisps of its existence dispersing around her like morning fog. She didn't watch it go. Her eyes were elsewhere- turned inward, fixed on something far more interesting than a jobber with ambitions above its screen time limit.
'I wonder what he's doing right now...' The question bounced into her skull out of nowhere, as it always did. Every hour like an internal alarm. 'Probably getting into trouble without me. He always does that. That could be a very good explanation for how he even ended up here.' A pause in her internal monologue, her brow furrowing slightly. 'What in dad's name even is here...'
The silver haired beauty shelved that line of thinking before it could spiral.
'I'll just ask the caprine whenever I see her again...'
With that, she swapped her focus onto the path ahead, her thin tail whipping just above the floor idly, its heart-shaped tip barely short of grazing the ground as she passed the weapon that mob dropped a bit ago.
The scenery didn't improve the further she walked.
If anything, the reveal of where exactly she was made the scene just plain sad. The ground beneath her heeled combat boots was a patchwork of granite and something else. Something that looked like granite, felt denser than granite, and had the audacity to occasionally catch the moonlight like polished obsidian without actually being either. Whatever it was, it stretched on in every direction without variation or apology.
About twelve feet in any direction she's yet to venture, a fog began. Thick, white, and impossible to see past it by even an inch. It didn't swirl dramatically or pulse with malice — it simply existed as a wall, a permanent horizon that luckily dissipated and stayed as such once she breached forward. One could call it a literal Fog of War.
Above, the cloudless sky revealed all of itself without issue. Endless black, littered with stars so densely packed they looked less like a night sky and more like someone had taken a handful of light and thrown it at a ceiling. And presiding over all of it, hanging high and full and unbothered, was a moon the color of old bone. It didn't glow so much as it loomed, a chandelier in a ballroom nobody had been invited to. Looking at it directly would give off an aura of something staring back.
A fact this lovely lady found out a few minutes ago and decided to ignore. Hence why she's so focused on looking dead ahead, if she focused her gaze on anything there at all that is.
All in all, the place had the aesthetic of a Brothers Grimm fever dream. Bleak, still, and beautiful in the specific way that things are beautiful when they're also clearly trying to kill you. Or at least housing things with murderous intent behind every corner.
Arms in her trench coat, she sauntered onward.
Until something stepped through the fog in the corner of her eye.
The figure emerged slowly, deliberately, like it had all the time in the world and wanted you to know that. And once it cleared the white curtain enough to be properly seen, she stopped.
The entity before her was tall and curvaceous, with hip length jet black hair. Draped in what could generously be described as a little black dress, and far less generously described as a tablecloth someone had folded strategically over the important areas and called it a day.
A tablecloth that was doing such a bad job it might as well get fired if a light breeze blew. Long black goat horns rose from her head, their surface drinking in every trace of light that touched them and giving none of it back- not a gleam, not a reflection, just an absence that somehow still managed to be visible. The same void-black crept down her legs in patterns that mirrored thigh highs so precisely it took a second glance to confirm they weren't.
And on top of that, a warm smile aimed right for the silver haired woman. Not to mention the captions that sprang forth from under her generous bosom. The font adding to the overflowing femininity practically flowing off of this new being.
The damn-near polar opposite of the silver haired divider before her. Who was dressed like a depressed dad on a search for his wife. Bonus points for if she was also looking for a missing daughter with that brown jacket, combat boots, and blue jeans combo.
If this chick were to look away or from you for any reason, or just have her face blocked somehow I won't blame you for thinking she's a whole ass 40 year old man.
SHUB NIGGURATH
Big and bold, impossible to miss, jet black letters with pure white shadows for ease of reading. Staying up for a few seconds before dissolving into nothingness.
All in all, this new entity was a complete 180 to that nameless mob at the beginning of the chapter, who wasn't even worth a physical description And by the way those two were looking at each other, they've clearly met before.
'Speak of the devil, caprine~' The wanderer chuckled internally, this newly arrived woman most likely being that "caprine" mentioned not too long ago.
Golden orbs glinted at the taller woman's closed eyes for a long moment, '...'. Whether to figure out what to say or just cuz she liked looking at the goat woman 10 feet in front of her was hard to tell. Or maybe it was both.
"Mind explaining why you're dressed like that again?" Both, both is a good guess.
"I read that humans and their adjacents would be far more receptive of me in this form," Shub Niggurath answered, with the unbothered confidence of someone citing peer reviewed research.
Her chin lifted just slightly — proud, the way a mother is proud of a decision her child will definitely grow to understand eventually.
"Where did you read that exactly?"
A skeptical eyebrow raised, doubting that shit came from a credible source of any kind.
"Rule 34 comment sections." The smile didn't waver even slightly.
Still smug. Completely unrepentant.
Silver hair fell over the woman's forehead as she pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "Moving on." She lowered her hand, her expression resetting to something approaching neutral as she rose her head back to normal, craning her neck to look at the 6'10" tall titan with her 5'9" frame. "Are you sure my dearly beloved is here?"
"Search for him and you'll find out." Shub answered without missing a beat. Saying it gently, the way you'd encourage someone who already knew the answer.
A pause.
"...Fucking wow caprine, that answers my que-"
There was an attempt at sarcasm, but that was promptly shut down before it could even finish.
"Ping his tattoo, lovebird." The goat woman used much the same tone an experienced mom would drop on her 3rd teenage daughter before they could try giving her lip.
Said rebellious teen blinked, as if she was a starving kid who was just told the stuff on the plate in front of her is indeed food.
"Oh, right." She chuckled without smiling, sounding a bit sarcastic while she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
A long moment passes. With Shub staring at her the entire time, giving off the vibe of someone with more patience than they know what to do with.
"Found him." Uttered the lighter haired of the two, trench coat billowing as she stepped to her right, leaving her ally where she stood.
"Good luck~!" Cheered the goat lady, waving goodbye before spinning on her heel and reentering the fog behind her.