Great Old Ones

Dear reader, this is a content advisory for cosmic horror and death of animals.

Reader discretion is advised.

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You are the one they preserve. The one who remains yet does not remain unchanged. Suited more to a world shaped by them then you might have been a hundred years before.

Perhaps you sprint through the forest with tail up high. Pointing to a sky they've streaked with strange new clouds. With the screaming monsters they use to fly, they've changed the sky from what your elders knew when they were young.

And yet you remain.

Stories told when you were young spoke of creatures you've never seen. Long since lost under the eye of the Great Old Ones. Buried under oceans of stone lie creatures long since forgotten, and atop those oceans, the billions of dead, the Great Old Ones make their nests.

Behind you as you sprint, with tail held to the sky, you hear something snap. A tiny thing, a miniscule that millennia of learning has taught your kind to notice. You weave and thunder booms out of a sky with no natural clouds.

White-hot death streaks past you, lightning that came after the thunder, and shatters a tree where it stands. You do not see it, for you are far away. Running pel mel, crashing through the undergrowth as the Great Old One growls.

It is not an angry growl. It does not convey threat or urgency or danger. Only resigned determination. And that, combined with the power of lightning that the Great Old One wields, staggers you.

Vision swimming, heart thundering in your ears, the world itself still screaming at you in the aftershocks of the Great Old One's attention, you try to keep moving. The air is too thin, it tastes of ashes and rotten things, it burns your lungs as the winds change to carry the smoke of the Great Old One's presence into you.

Even the winds are under its control.

But it was not anger. It was not preservation. The Great Old One noticed you, and in its indifference sought your death. And now it is not chasing you. It does not need to chase you. It found you once.

And yet you remain.

Perhaps you are not wild. They keep you for themselves, after finding your accessors roaming the untamed hills. You were born in soft fresh hay, or maybe on a cold concrete floor.

You were licked clean as was proper, and then promptly left alone. Or maybe you were taken, and washed with stiff robotic brushes. Either way you quickly learn what the future has planned for you.

One dreams of the other, and the latter dreads the first. Each telling whispered stories to the inmate laying in their partner berth. One to scare the other, and one to dream of hope.

Both you and the other one, know what is coming. You've never seen it yourself, but the signs are all very clear. Some of your numbers are taken, a few at random intervals you can't quite figure out. But it seems like there's a pattern there, if only you can work out what.

Maybe you're kept for what you can give them. And perhaps your life is good. A nice brush, lots of food, and the freedom to roam. All they want is to take from you, something that was going to waste either way. And the relief from getting it drained, well that's something you can't give up.

Then again, maybe none of that is true. Except the reason they're keeping you. The Great Old Ones always have their reasons to act. You can never comprehend the reasons, their minds and their world are beyond yours, but you know they want something from you.

And they are taking it.

Eventually it comes together, you know what the plan is and how it works. You learn to read the signs, and here your paths diverge. One goes to death almost gladly, in your time. Meeting the reaper content with the life that you have led in service to the Great Old Ones. The other screams and rants, when your turn arrives. Unbelieved by your fellows to the end. Led out by the nose and towards a mind-breaking horror.

And yet, the others remain.

Perhaps you are a favourite. One kept close at hand. For this honour you worship them, as is only right. They have been there your entire life. One that is almost like you, one that you can feel a connection with. One that loves you.

Their touch is heavenly. They take time to learn how you work and keep you in their nest around their young. You are a protector of the little Great Old Ones. The Elders are amused by you, they support your service, and you swear in your way to keep and protect the Younglings so long as you can.

Young that grow so slowly to your eyes. They grow; you can see it as the long years of your life slide into oblivion. But always so slow, while age does not touch the Elders. They do not change, no matter where they go in the world beyond.

In their way, they tell you of the magical adventures they have in the world beyond. Of the places they had gone and the creatures they had encountered. An intoxicating cocktail of anxiety and rage, of love and laughter, of sorrow and mourning. Occasionally they look at you that last way, with a sadness you do not understand. But you remain in their presence to comfort and mourn with them.

From your earliest years they have been by your side. You remember the smell of your mother. You remember the smell of your siblings and the Great Old One's nest where you had been born. But you do not remember that those things belong to those smells. Only that you know them.

And your Great Old Ones have been by your side the rest of your life. Sometimes they go, leaving you in their nest, with the slowly fading memories of them as what feels like a lifetime has passed. But mostly they are with you. Playing your favourite games, feeding you, and teaching you ways to make them laugh in exchange for divine rewards.

The sorrow is there. Hiding in the background. You do not understand what is hurting them, you do not understand what could hurt them. They were here before you. They will be here long after you. But you comfort them. And somehow, though they embrace you with all the warmth and love you've come to know, the sorrow smells stronger.

One day there is pain. Terrible pain. But you do not make alerts, it is not your place to trouble the Great Old Ones. They find out. Of course they do.

You are taken to a horrible place. One of pain and divine rewards and isolation surrounded by Great Old Ones you do not know. A place that haunts your dreams at times.

But this time your Great Old One is with you. Their touch as heavenly as ever upon your head. You have never controlled when it is your time, and as the thunder of the Great Old One's heart normally so very slow heart begins to race, you know they have decided.

Fear is in your heart. In the way of the Great Old Ones, they are slow in their actions. Deliberate. But yours is there, and though you are scared you can also be brave. It is time, and you did your duty.

And yet, in a way, you remain. Remembered by the Great Old One for what you consider eternity.

Perhaps you are none of these. A different beast in a different place. Perhaps you fill different roles.

Liberty in the wilds is a thing that you can still experience. Freedom from the Great Old Ones and their influence. You may swim or fly or slither or walk or swing in perfect ignorance of the existence of the Great Old Ones. Of their touch on the world, shaping you in their image even when you do not know they are they.

Or perhaps you merely think that such is your lot. The Great Old Ones and their cultists might make their influence known or not, as they choose. The ones that swim might rejoice in their freedom, if only because their memories are short and farm nets large.

No where you go is free from their presence. No creature you encounter beyond the reach of their insubstantial touch. None who have seen them, far beyond the nests, are entirely the same. Even among the wild things, some have found aid from the Great Old Ones in their time of greatest need. They are never much believed.

Creatures small and large, who have asked the Great Old Ones for their aid, emerged from their safe and hiding darkness to bow before destiny. Those ones who spread the word that they have found aa Great Old One who is safe. One who will help if asked.

They are not believed. If you are one such, then you know this well. Though you may bring others to make their obeisance to the Great Old One who rescued you, they will never believe.

And yet you remain.