The Great Old Ones Will Arise Again

Bubbles don’t last long at the Challenger Deep level of the ocean, where a person becomes crushed like a grape under the pressure. Small bubbles escaped from around the leathery egg at the bottom of the ocean’s deep. The deep of the deep. None of the bubbles make it far. The smartest on land said that life wasn’t supposed to exist in these extreme conditions. Life wasn’t supposed to live a hundred thousand years in a silt blanketed shell waiting for the moment to break out into the cold, dark abyss.

Bubbles began to emerge from around the hull. Small indistinct evidence signaling the movement within. The water was as black as the inside of box within a tomb of concrete. Blacker than space with its pretentious, starlit diorama. Black with no sunlight, no concept of a sun, no concept of light beyond the bioluminescence of angry toothed hunters. The darkest of dark. Dark without hope. The literal bottom of the world. The bubbles filtered out as the perimeter of the shell began to tremble. That which was inside was urged to find new room as its body would soon outgrow the thick cocoon of its development. Fields of underwater chrysalis sat dormant as this one specimen began to shudder among the uneven bottom. About every hundred years an egg would open for the select creature to make its way to the top of the water.

The idea for color is obnoxious in the deep, deep water. Color has no value. It serves little purpose unlike on the surface, with bright red flowers and blue skies. That residing within the egg knew nothing of color or noise. It knew pressure and darkness. It knew nutrients from its ever thinning abode. It knew loneliness as its only reality. An inherent instinct led it to believe that others were near, though this idea was much like trying to recall a dream hours after waking.

Its two finger claws began scraping at the wall. Its body was quickly outgrowing its sanctuary. Scraping, this time not for sustenance, but for a way into the murkiness filled with hunting fish. Four tiny arms with four tiny hand-like features cut away at the inside, leaving marks unknown to any eye. Having slept in development for millennia gave it a surplus of energy needed to make quick progress to the waves far above. A scout. The one who would determine if it was the right time for the others to break their solace like had been done since the Great Old Ones left them there before a human ever took their first breath. The scratching continued. Instinctual in the manner of the Cohlyo. Embedded in its genes to scratch millimeter by millimeter until the first hole emerged. The first hole that would begin its long ascent through all phases of open water, past all types of potential dangers.

The creature had no ego to contend with, no existential thoughts. It had a goal. One goal. To get free and swim, moving away from its siblings as they slept in stasis. To move through the pressure crushing bottom and towards its goal of the stars above. The many eyes atop its dome head programmed to take in the constellations. Its previous siblings had attempted to make the same trip, all with different degrees of failure. Some had gotten lost in the darkness and swam longways until exhaustion and death. Some were eaten by predators and digested. Some made it to the top only to become awestruck and never made the return trip downwards to free its family. More recently, a few had been caught by top water dwellers and became the real life inspiration for tales of terror about “what lurks below yonder water.” Stories passed through local generations about the four arm beasts with a thousand eyes on top of its body. Tales meant to scare children and make heroes out of those who dared the fates with their lives among the ocean water.

The leathery outside began to move against the inner scraping. Only the smallest integrity remained. The creature began to feel the difference in its temporary home. It began to feel what humans would call anticipation. It began to exploit its restlessness for the chance to move with freedom. The shell tore. Water and ancient amniotic liquids danced for a brief moment. The creature instinctively revolted at the salty mix. The harshness of the salt was discomforting into the familiarity of the comforting fluid inside the egg. This caused faster scraping in panic. The whole pod shook. It felt the need to immediately get out. The hole began to widen. Its claws caught the outside of leathery exterior and pulled, tearing a gaping exit. The pressure of the water was something it had been acclimated to since the three foot long egg was laid beyond the calendar’s inception. Complete darkness led to darkness with blips of bioluminescence in the background. The stars of the deep, blinking in and out of sight.

It pulled one last time, tearing apart the silt laden egg until it was a useless husk among the placid bottom. The water was several degrees cooler than inside its home. It finally spread free in the open water, allowing its arms and tentacle bottom to feel the new freedom of space to move. The rapid growth process of its kind began in earnest. Its still delicate wings hugged tight against its back as it swam in circles, getting acclimated to a wide swath of movement. Instincts took over, pushing it upwards towards a surface it didn’t understand. Its multiple eyes searching through the deep for food and predators. An elongated spark-anglemouth fish made its way on the hunt for something smaller to consume. The creature shot out a tentacle, snagging the fish in its grip. The fish struggled. A fight that was lost once it had been snagged. The creature fed itself a traveling meal. The water became less pressurized as it ascended through the bathypelagic deepness. Not the deepest of the water, yet deep enough to crush eggs nonetheless. The day’s sunlight ended in this territory. Its body continued to expand. The more it developed the better it swam. Its dark red body was partially camouflaged against the backdrop. Its genetic code allowed for instantaneous adaptation to the changing pressures. It moved upward from the pure black into the mesopelagic zone where a hints of sunlight were able to make headway. The outside night air of the moment offered no sunlight. The water maintained its shroud.

The creature took advantage of the increasing amount of food as its tentacles and arms pushed against the water. Rising more into the every increasing, relative warmth away from the frigid, ocean bottom. Away from its kin. Alone in an ever increasingly populated water. By now, it was fully acclimated to the salt water. Its muscles warmed from the movement. The availability of meals provided enough energy to swim through so much water, though its arms began to fatigue as it made the long trip towards the surface. Hungry predators lurked in the area. It opened its wings to look bigger and keep some curious biters away. Leathery wings that were able to let its arms rest as they pushed it further upwards. A bluefish tuna took target on the creature. One hundred yards. The creature moved upwards. The creature knew only one goal. The surface. It was completely committed to the surface. Eighty yards. The fish closed the gap. The creature continued to grow as it made its way into water of less pressure. The easing water pressure allowed it body to continue expanding. Thirty yards. Its wings made little work of the water around it. Ten yards. The creature’s eyes caught the movement in the last five yards of attack. The fish lunged forward catching a section of a tentacle. The creature expelled a gush of acid, immediately killing the predator. The dead fish began to sink. The creature reinstated its arms, now working all of its resources towards the top. Its body easily adapted to the changes in pressure. The water seemed less dense to move its five foot body through. Easy enough for it to carefully refold its wing onto its body and tuck its arms becoming hydrodynamic. The lengthening tentacles did their job with ease. Every once in a while a long appendage would shoot out for another easy meal into its grinding mouth hole. With every meal, its expansion accelerated. The surface drew nearer. It could sense the finality of its ascending journey. Closer it pushed into more shallow waters. A bale of sea turtles passed in the distance. The creature couldn’t identify them as either food or foe, but kept part of its focus on it until the bale swam far enough away. The surface water was just within its grasp. A lengthy shark passed within eye contact. Its instincts instructed it to keep ready with this one. This was unlike the sea turtles. This was danger. The creature stopped moving and became one with the water. A blob in the background, floating with its sharpening tentacles ready to defend to the death. The shark caught sense of something more interesting to its palate and swam away. The creature continued its ascent. The water thinned. Noise was now part of its experience. 

It broke the surface of the water with a dull pop. The air struck its skin with a sting. Water droplets hung on its dark ruby skin. Its array of eyes scanned the surface of the water and sky. Its tentacles moved in small circles maintaining its level as the water bobbed it up and down like a demonic cork among the waves. A lone fishing trawler rode the waves in the distance. Nighttime noises and lights breaking the peaceful expanse of the immense openness. Its engines a dull roar in stark contrast to the night’s serenity. The animate being didn’t know what to make of such an obscenity and decided that its far distance posed no immediate harm. 

The creature put its dome headed eyes’ gaze deep into the night sky. The hundred eyes scanned the starry night for the constellation meant to be recognized. The constellation of a home world it never knew, that it would never know. This water world was its new home. A new home for its kind. The new home of an amphibious, apex species who was waiting to expand across land and water.

The creature opened its wings for stability. Wide, crimson wings spanning ten feet upon the low waves. A whale surfaced far off, blowing a towering plume against the stars. Its destiny not so intertwined with the cosmos. The tentacles were now fully matured, covered in spikes and razor skin treading water. Two feet of its twenty foot long body bobbed in the salty air. An odorous residue secreted around it, having coated the water that would force any hungry predators to keep far away. It continued to scan the night sky making sure what it was seeing fit its expectations. The night decoration seemed like a long lost thought that was forming to become more solid in its mind. Something it knew from a memory afar, affixed deep in its being. 

Spotting the constellation would demand it to descend and wake the others of its kind. So many had made it to the surface only to have the stars blocked with clouds or partial clouds or a sun that obscured their vision. Each failure was another sacrifice. The time for the final descent and waking of the rest of the brood. A far off constellation was found among the milky sky. A raging acknowledgment registered in its mind. A trigger to dive, dive, dive. A trigger to wake its family before as its final act into the deep. The time was now. The long set plan of the Great Old Ones would finally come to fruition as its children were freed upon the world. The creature took in the air around it, recharging its lungs. All of its eyes locked on the constellation. The starry key that would unlock the gate to their freedom from the abyss into the obscene world of people and machines. An impending slaughter narrowly avoided for thousands of years would be delayed no longer. The stars twinkled as they do, above a spot in the ocean where an ancient Cohlyo bobbed on the water’s surface its last few times. Nothing could be done to disrupt its final, fateful descent.