Chapter 15: Cult Management (1/2)
This world sucked!
The locals had bound Victor to an olive tree with heavy chains under the faint moonlight. Around twenty werewolves had gathered to observe the sacrifice, while a squid-like humanoid held the ceremony, chittering incantations while wielding a scepter. Victor guessed the Moon Man worshippers were a relative minority in the community.
Unfortunately, the majority had given Victor the silent treatment.
“Brother, is that smart?” Chocolatine asked her brother, one of the few who did argue against the adventurer’s capture. “He is the dragon’s chief of staff, and that one is angry already…”
“He burnt our previous home, sis,” Croissant pointed out. Unlike his sister, he had shapeshifted in a monstrous, car-sized black wolf, glaring at Victor with seething hatred.
“Yes, which is why I don’t want him to burn our current one.”
“I’m sure Victor was just following orders,” Savoureuse tried to argue with the cultists, although that wasn’t the passionate defense Victor had hoped for. “Do not blame the follower, blame the leader.”
Croissant sneered back. “I asked the adventurer guild after the dragon devastated our home, and they confirmed the ‘human partner’ led the dragon in the first place.”
“But Vainqueur burned the forest on his own!” Victor protested.
“You still led him there!” Croissant snapped back.
“He burned my house!” another werewolf complained in the crowd.
“I watched all my livestock die!”
Savoureuse gave Victor a sympathetic gaze. “I’m sorry, Vic. I tried. I would have fought to release you if my life wasn't in danger.”
Victor shrugged. It was more than he expected.
The Moon Man’s priest finished the incantation, and a beam of light descended from the skies. With a brilliant flash, a horrible insult against nature manifested in front of Victor, a bus-sized hybrid of a dragon and a squid, with no eyes and only squirmy skin. Its countless tentacles thrashed around, tossing away some of the werewolf cultists.
The mere sight of the creature gave Victor a headache.
Charisma check successful! [Madness] negated!
The creature sounded no more happy to be here than Victor himself. “You again!” it shrieked with a shrilling, inhuman voice. “Why will you not stop?”
“Great Moon Beast!” the lead priest called, the other cultists bowing before the creature. Only Croissant, Chocolatine and Savoureuse remained still. “Your rancid glory honors us! Please, accept this sacrifice in atonement!”
The monster didn’t feel grateful. At all. “I do not understand the movements of your squishy tongue, skinbag, but I swear on the Moon Man, one day I will lose my self-control, and I will drip my pseudopods in the hole you use for excrement.”
“Mmm… sir,” Victor told the creature. “I would like to say that I am not complicit in this.”
The titan froze. “You speak r'lyehian, skinbag?”
R'lyehian? Victor figured his Perk had translated the words in the creature’s native tongue. “Well, yes I can understand you just fine.” The adventurer blinked. “They can’t?”
“He can understand the Moon Beast without going mad?” the squid priest turned to Croissant, who shrugged his shoulders in confusion.
Victor guessed they lacked the Perk needed to discuss with the interstellar abomination. “Since you can also understand me,” the human told the creature. “Words can’t convey how unappetizing I am.”
“Why would I eat you? You don’t even have pseudopods. Eurgh… you moving gametes disgust me… your face is terrible, and you look like a cancer with these big, bulbous, disgusting… eyes...”
How did it even know Victor had eyes since it had none itself? “Yeah, having eyes is terrible, almost as much as being tied to a tree while being threatened with death.”
“I will tell you what is terrible, gamete creature. You are minding your own business, enjoying your once in an eon vacation, before the stars are right and you must go back to work, and you are this,” the abomination raised two tentacles, “this close to eating that tasty telepathic spider. Then, without warning, someone teleports you right as you have your food in your tendrils, then throws a screaming human whelp at you. And they do that. Every. Single. Moon! Wouldn’t you vent a little?”
When seeing things this way… That would explain why tentacled creatures always destroyed the world when summoned.
“Yes, but…” Victor trailed, glancing at the cultists and Croissant in particular, who couldn’t understand the Moon Beast’s half of the conversation. “Why at me, and not at them?”
The creature sighed. “The Moon Man is… absent-minded, so we have to take care of his cults. He already has so few of them, and while stupid, this one is devout. I wish they could just stop summon me all the time, though. I do not know where they got the idea that the Moon Man needs live sacrifices, but the idea spread everywhere.”
“I think they do that because they do not understand what you say, unlike me,” Victor replied. “I can clarify your needs to them, and make them stop.”
“You can make it stop?” The titan's tentacles wriggled and let out a sound that sounded dirty. “Oh, yes! Yes!”
“You’ve got to spare and free me free first, though.”
“Yes, yes, anything it takes.” The titan’s tentacles surged towards the chains, breaking them without effort. Victor walked away from the tree, enjoying his newfound freedom, much to the amazement of the cultists, and Croissant’s frustration.
None were more than the leading priest. “He… the newcomer has been chosen by the Moon Beast as its mouthpiece!”
“It says…” Victor trailed, before frowning at the Moon Beast. “Actually, what is your name?”
“Thul-Gathar, gamete skinbag.”
“Thul-Gathar says moonly sacrifices are not needed to show your devotion to its progenitor.”
The cultists exchanged hushed whispers. “Then how can we serve the Moon Man?” asked the chief priest.
“They’re asking what they should replace the sacrifices with,” Victor translated.
“Tell them they must moonwalk until they collapse of exhaustion every full moon, then to eat their own fecal matter.”
“Seriously?”
“No, but that would have been funny,” the Moon Beast replied. “Tell them to pray to the Moon Man for insight, then to hold a quiet, private orgy under the moonlight every full moon; narcotics are encouraged, but not necessary. Order them to stop summoning me, as I have other cults to guide.”
“Thul-Gathar says that you must pray the Moon Man for insight, while…” The cult listened to him with religious, rapturous attention, making Victor uneasy. “Having a drugged orgy every full moon.”
“Also, no more incest,” the Moon Beast clarified. “It is very important Father’s cults remain healthy and fertile. We allowed inbreeding long ago, and cults keep dying out because of it today.”
“Thul-Gathar explicitly forbids incest, which is an affront to the Moon Man.”
“Even cousins?” the priest asked.
“Are cousins allowed?” Victor transmitted the message.
The Moon Beast hesitated for a good minute, before coming with an answer. “Cousins are reluctantly forbidden, but in-laws are allowed in return.”
“Cousins are not allowed, but since blood is the only barrier to love, thou can lay with your in-laws. Finally, your repeated summonings prevent Thul-Gathar from guiding other civilizations to glory. It says that you have reached sufficient enlightenment to manage yourselves.”
“Ch'yar ul'nyar shaggornyth,” the cultists said all at once.
“Yes, yes, inbred gamete people,” Thul-Gathar answered dismissively, his flock unable to understand him. “Are we done?”
“Yes, I think they will behave from now on.”