Zogrusz sat on his throne and considered the nature of existence. Was there a purpose to it all? He had seen in his wanderings that nearly the entirety of the cosmos was a vast emptiness, sprinkled here and there with spheres of superheated gases and rocks hurtling through the dark. Life in its desperate fragility had emerged in a few systems where dumb chance had created the perfect circumstances, but it was always fated to be brief, at least in relation to the age of the universe. A rogue comet or the death of a star or a ravenous cosmic monster would eventually destroy whatever had managed to grow. It was inevitable.

He thought of the Old Ones, asleep while drifting in the deepest void. Of what did they dream? About some great secrets, perhaps who or what had wound the cosmos up and set it in motion. If there was indeed a plan that was unfolding with painstaking precision? Were they soldiers in a war to prevent the birth of a supreme being? Or were even the Old Ones like all other conscious beings in the universe, nothing more than accreted stardust that had somehow achieved awareness and were now blundering along blindly?

Whatever the truth was, Zogrusz realized on some level that he should not be concerned about the fate of this one insignificant world. It was a grain of sand in a desert that stretched almost to infinity. After the Reaper had come and gone and the Harvest had finished it would be like it had never been . . . no, he amended, a shard of black crystal would remain, a history locked within its faceted depths. And perhaps a godlike telepath would arrive in the far distant future and give form to what was contained within. Why should he care what happened to this world, when life here was always going to end eventually?

But he did. He did care.

So alone in his cavern, listening to the whir and click of the insects climbing the walls, Zogrusz grieved for everything that would someday be lost.

***

“Zog!”

Zogrusz roused himself, sitting up straighter on his throne. He’d been close to sinking into his deep slumber again, but the pull was not yet quite so insistent that he couldn’t drag himself back to wakefulness.

From his perch atop his ziggurat, his gaze swept the cavern, quickly finding the small girl staring about in wide-eyed wonder where she stood a few steps from the tunnel leading to the outside. It looked to him like she had come alone, as there was no sign of Rhas.

“It’s wonderful in here!” Qala cried up to him, her voice echoing. “I love these carvings . . . and the ceiling! Amazing!”

Zogrusz heaved himself to his feet and started to descend the tiered pyramid, flexing his wings to try and relieve their stiffness. “It’s taken a long time,” he said, savoring the feeling her praise had kindled.

She turned to goggle at him. “You did this? All these carvings?”

He shrugged, as if to dismiss her reaction, but he couldn’t keep his mouth-tendrils from twitching in satisfaction. “I saw what the humans had made and realized I wanted to learn how to create such things.”

Qala drifted over to the wall and ran her tiny fingers over a carving of one of the Great Old Ones. “And is this really what an adult Eldritch Horror looks like?”

“It’s what I remember. That time is . . . hazy. Like a dream half-remembered.”

The girl glanced at him, then back to the carving, her brow furrowed. “It doesn’t really resemble you, with all these mouths and tendrils and eyes. You’re much more handsome.”

Zogrusz couldn’t hold back a surprised snort. He hadn’t been expecting her to say that.

“I wonder if they once looked more like you,” she mused, tracing his outline in the air. “You know, two arms, two legs, two eyes. But then when they . . . grew up they changed. And left your more typical shape behind.”

Zogrusz didn’t want to think about that. The memory of Ixia telling him that the Reaper would excise his humanity and transform him into a callous monster had been weighing heavily, and what she had just said reminded him of that.

“Where is Rhas?” he asked, gesturing for the girl to follow him over to the benches he’d placed beside the pool of water.

“He had stuff to do. He wanted to go talk to Annie and I didn’t.” Her little face scrunched up when she mentioned the bird-goddess.

“He? I’ve always wondered if he was male or female.”

Qala hopped up onto one of the benches and began swinging her legs. “Yeah, he thinks of himself as a boy. I saw it in his thoughts.”

Zogrusz settled onto a bench, picking with a claw at one of the cracks in the slab of stone. “So you can see into his mind as well?”

Qala nodded. “You’re all open books to me. Which is why I’m not worried about coming here, despite that you’re an Eldritch Horror living under a mountain. I can see your true self – and it’s much nicer than Annie, even though she’s so pretty.” She suddenly gasped, pointing at the phosphorescent shapes flickering in the dark water. “Look! Fish!”

“Do they make you think of home?” Zogrusz asked, his mouth-tendrils twitching in amusement at her excitement.

Qala made a face. “Ixia’s pet wasn’t my home.”

Zogrusz leaned forward, suddenly interested to know more. He’d been curious about Qala ever since they’d stumbled across the little blonde girl in the city of snakes-men. “Oh? Where did you come from?”

“Don’t know the world’s name,” Qala said, flicking away a many-legged insect that was undulating across the bench towards her. “Might not even have had one. My people were very primitive, still living in caves and hiding in fear every time it thundered outside. I don’t remember much from that time, except that my parents were considered something like priests. There was a big skull everybody prayed to in our cavern, so big my mother could stand inside it and shout out what the spirit wanted everybody to do.” Her voice was growing more distant as she talked. “One day I was just sitting in a field playing with the flowers while my mother gathered some berries, and I felt something . . . open inside me, and all these voices rushed into my head. I started crying because I didn’t know what was going on. My mother ran to me, and I realized I could see her love and concern spilling forth . . . along with all those secret thoughts people have inside them. Pretty soon everyone in my tribe knew I was different. I guess I’m lucky they didn’t declare me some kind of demon and throw me in a lake. Maybe it was because my parents were considered close to the spirit we worshipped, and my mother managed to convince them that I had been blessed.”

“Do you think that’s what happened? That your . . . god touched you?” Zogrusz found he had some trouble even saying that word, since he knew that ‘gods’ were nothing but cosmic beings – parasites, in truth – feeding off the emotions of mortals. Like him.

Qala shrugged. “Dunno. Ixia definitely didn’t think so. He said my gifts are bigger than any other creature he had met in the universe, cosmic or mortal.” She began to twine a strand of her golden hair around a finger, her face clouding like she was thinking of something troubling. “It’s not just the telepathy, you know. I stopped getting older that day in the field.” Her gaze grew more somber as she fell into her memories. “I watched my mother and father grow old. Then my brothers and sisters. And then their children, but I always stayed exactly the same. If Ixia hadn’t found me, I probably would still be there, sitting inside that skull getting sadder and sadder.” Suddenly she shook her head, her impish smile returning. “But I don’t want to think about that. I’m happier now. I was happy on the fish too, for a while, but it’s hard to stay around other people for so long when you always know what they’re thinking. Ixia . . . he didn’t really care for me. He was just obsessed with his project. When he realized I probably wouldn’t be able to help him finish it he lost a lot of interest in me.”

Zogrusz tossed a pebble into the pool of dark water and the glowing fish scattered. “You’ve mentioned this project a few times. What was it?”

Qala glanced at him sidelong. “It’s supposed to be a secret . . . but just don’t tell Ixia I said anything, okay?” She waited until Zogrusz nodded in agreement before continuing. “Do you remember all those strands from the fish that were going into his body? They were keeping him alive – he’s very old, you see.” That was exactly what Zogrusz had suspected – he couldn’t imagine anyone connecting themselves to the innards of a fish unless the situation was extremely dire. “Anyway, Ixia wanted to find a way to . . . move his consciousness into another body. Not a copy – which is much easier – but his actual, original self. It’s more complicated than you might think,” Qala assured him hurriedly.

Zogrusz certainly hadn’t thought it would be easy. Even the simplest of minds he’d delved into had been exceedingly complex.

“I’m surprised he let you go with us.”

Qala smirked. “I wasn’t his prisoner. When I first went with him, I told him I would only stay as long as I wanted to. And you all couldn’t hear it, but I said a bit more to him just before we left.” She tapped the side of her head. “I promised that if I ever . . . solved the biggest problem of his project I’d come find him, and we’d finish what we started.”

“What was this problem?”

“Well, you have to understand –” Her eyes suddenly widened, and she twisted around to stare at the entrance to his cavern. “Huh. She got here sooner than I thought she would.”

“Who?” Zogrusz asked, craning his head to try and see who might be coming down the tunnel.

“Anecoya. She just landed outside. And it doesn’t seem like she’s coming in, so I guess she wants us to go to her.”

Zogrusz stood slowly as Qala slid from the bench. “Why is she here?”

“I asked her to come.”

“All right . . . but why did you do that?”

Qala struck the side of her head, as if something had just occurred to her. “That’s right, I hadn’t told you yet.” She brushed dirt from her hands, then smoothed down her rumpled tunic as Zogrusz waited with growing impatience.

“Told me what?”

“Hm? Oh, that another cosmic being just entered this system. Something quite powerful.”