Dreaming pt.3 ...Demons made it their home by Rich
Thoats migrate quite a bit, and warthoats sometimes travel very far on raids. Still, even by thoat standards, Skippy was pretty well traveled. He'd raided almost to the gates of Zodanga, and once had seen the towers of Helium from the crest of a nearby ridge (before the Heliumite airships had run the war party off - which Skippy thought was cheating). The city in front of him now was bigger than either.
The buildings were enormous, some of them big enough to contain a small horde complete with zitidars, and there were very very many of them. Skippy couldn't count how many. Of course, Skippy couldn't count very high; he tended to fall down if he counted as high as six, because he couldn't balance himself very well on just two legs. Still, there were a lot of buildings. The strange part was that they were built in the water. Not just ON the water -which would have been strange enough -, but actually in it. If the shapes he could dimly make out were what they looked like, many of the buildings were completely submerged. Who would build a building under water, and how did they do it ?
The buildings themselves looked odd. They had the wrong number of sides, and the angles were ... just wrong, somehow. Things that should have been straight up and down weren't, and things that should have been flat were curved. Skippy didn't know exactly why, but looking at these things disturbed him.
Strangest of all were the creatures; and this time he knew that they really were creatures and not made things. They had no bones. Also, no heads, unless they were all head in which case they had no bodies. They were like big, wet, grey sacks, with big eyes on the front, a beaky mouth under the eyes, and lots of ropethings along the bottom. He thought they looked slimy. They were all over the buildings, pulling themselves up the sides, and sliding through the water. They seemed to move faster in the water than they did on the buildings, but Skippy couldn't make out how they did it. He couldn't see how they moved at all without legs, but they did. He could sense them telepathically. For him to detect them at such a distance, they must have very strong minds - and very strange ones, for their impression was not like anything Skippy had ever sensed.
The greatest number of them were gathered on a large building near the shore, which had three sloping sides (Skippy could count that high, at least), and a flat top with a big hole in the middle. The inside of the hole was pitch black; the sunlight didn't reach into it all. There was a stone ramp leading up the side of the building. A raised stone roadway led to the base of the ramp, and along the roadway strode the thing he'd been following. It still had its' captives, and at least some of them were still alive.
The thing climbed the ramp to the top, and lowered the prisoners to the roof. The prisoners were immediately seized by the sackpeople (he had to call them something). The sackpeople tied the prisoners to some kind of metal frames, and began moving and waving their ropethings. Their telepathic impulses changed, becoming more regular; it was a little like the way greenpeople's voices changed when they sang. Skippy thought the sackpeople were singing with their minds, which was just one more strange thing to add to the rest.
A green tinted light began shining from the hole in the roof, and something began to emerge. Skippy started to shiver. Whatever it was was much too big to fit through the hole, but somehow it fit anyway. The head was shaped a little like one of the sackpeople, but was bigger than a Red Martian battleship. The body was even bigger, and had arms, and legs, and wings, and claws, and things that Skippy couldn't name. In fact, he couldn't exactly see it, because his eyes couldn't quite focus on it. It hurt his eyes to look at it. Its' shape kept shifting, and it flickered and wavered, as if it wasn't exactly there, or all there, or maybe it was there but only some of the time. Skippy thought that the sackpeople shouldn't exist on Barsoom, but this thing shouldn't exist at all, anywhere.
It turned its' head toward him. Why did it have so many eyes ?
A blast of telepathic force filled his head, like all the banths on Barsoom roaring in his ear.
Skippy woke up shaking. He did not go back to sleep until the sun came up.
*Author's note: Ok, we started with Buffy on Barsoom, added Wellsian Martians, and now (if I did it right) we have a suggestion of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. I don't own any of them, by the way. This is all I've got so far. As always, feel free to jump in.