Meanwhile, in another desolate region of Hollow Earth
Far from the awe-inspiring Anunnaki citadel of Ki'Gal, where Enki and the surface party unraveled the secrets of history, the darkness in Hollow Earth had its own terrible tragedies. Morgana Le Fay and Sorcha of the Crimson Hand had separated from the main contingent that accompanied Enki and Enlil. Their purpose was different, more personal, and perhaps more dangerous: to find Nyx, or what remained of her. Morgana, with her keen Fae perception and her recent connection to the chaos of the battle, felt the echo of Nyx's consciousness like an open wound in the Grid. Sorcha, despite her new and precarious pact with Dracula, still harbored a complex mix of residual loyalty and fear for the woman who had once been her Master, Eleonora.
Guided by Poimandres's fading energy signature and the last vestiges of Nyx's chaotic power, they entered a vast subterranean geode. The cavern walls glowed faintly with man-sized crystals embedded in them, casting a spectral light over a landscape of desolation. In the center, lying like a collapsed mountain of shadows, was Poimandres, the Primordial Dragon. His breathing was barely perceptible, and acrid black smoke emanated from the multiple wounds in his form of pure darkness.
And beside the dragon's head, curled up on the cold stone, was the form that had once been Nyx.
But something had fundamentally changed. The oppressive, voracious energy of Chaos that had always surrounded her had almost completely dissipated. The dark and terrifying majesty of the Queen of Eternal Night had vanished. The figure lying there was smaller, more fragile. Her hair, once a storm of shadows, now fell lank and dark around a face that, though marked by unimaginable suffering, was unmistakably Eleonora's. She was fast asleep, her breathing shallow, her being exhausted to the very edge of existence.
"Nyx... she's gone," Morgana whispered, her emerald Fae eyes scanning the currents of energy. "Or at least, the entity we knew as Nyx is... dormant, nearly extinguished. What remains... is Eleonora."
Sorcha knelt slowly beside the sleeping figure, an expression of disbelief and ancient pain on her face. "Master..." she murmured the name, a name she hadn't spoken with such inflection in countless years. Seeing Eleonora like this, stripped of her terrible power, vulnerable... was almost more disturbing than facing the Queen of Chaos.
At that precise moment, a cataclysmic rumble shook the Hollow Earth to its foundations. The walls of the geode trembled violently, and the giant crystals echoed with a high-pitched wail, some dislodging and crashing to the ground with the force of a meteorite. The ground heaved beneath their feet like the hide of a dying beast.
A roar, so vast and primordial that it seemed not a sound but a distortion of reality itself, swept through the cavern. It wasn't Poimandres's scream, nor the wail of the Banshee. It was the pure, alien fury of Cthulhu.
Morgana and Sorcha instinctively went on guard, their respective magics crackling around them.
"The Ancient One!" Morgana exclaimed, her Fae senses heightened by danger. "He's... furious. Much more so than before!"
"He doesn't seek us," Sorcha said, her dark eyes scanning the vibrations in the rock, her training as a Red Mage attuned to chaotic and destructive energies. "His anger... his attention... is directed elsewhere. He is sweeping the depths, hunting."
Through the rock and the distance, they felt the shockwaves of unimaginable power being unleashed. The structure of the Hollow Earth groaned and moaned.
"He is seeking Enlil," Morgana suddenly understood, remembering Enki's words about the Anunnaki Commander's failed offensive. "The one who dared to challenge him directly and survived his initial wrath. He has not yet found him, and his cosmic patience has completely run out."
Cthulhu's roar sounded again, closer this time, and with it, new tremors. The situation was desperate. They were trapped in the depths with an unconscious Eleonora and a dying Poimandres, while a mad, furious god rampaged through the Hollow Earth in search of another fallen god. And they were directly in his path. The need to know what they would do, how they would survive this new eruption of cosmic fury, was an icy lump of terror in their throats.