New Cthonic 7

AN: Feeling creatively refreshed recently. I want to do one to two more chapters of this for sure before any potential hiatus. After that, I might try to do both stories for a little before transitioning back full-time to Play Test, or I might take a break to mentally switch back to that world. Will play it by ear.

VII

The chalk sigils made his stones tingle. Not in a puerile way – he barely felt lust anymore – but quite literally. Each arcane rune the Lapontes drew in the Room of Respite sent electric shivers all the way to his Heart Room. His first proper engagement with an adventurer had unlocked aspects of his powers and given him all sorts of ideas for plans, but the sensations were so odd that they monopolized his attention. Salem was fascinated. Ritual magic had been utterly taboo in his past life – to feel it happening directly was riveting in more ways than one.

He could read the sigils better, he thought, than the Lapontes could. Salem didn’t know how, but each logograph inspired the same instant understanding that the English alphabet did. Maybe he spoke every language now, or maybe it had something to do with the Meta-Languages that Lift-Off had mentioned in her message to him. Unfortunately, the Lapontes wore mostly homemade items, or else he could have tested the ability on the tags. He would have to pay more attention the next time he received more sensibly dressed visitors.

Their grammar was almost incoherent. He hoped that didn’t matter too much; he’d come to quite enjoy having the family around. No one else gave him gifts or visited him with the same regularity, and it would be a shame if they had to stop because they drove themselves into violent insanity. You heard of these things happening and saw the aftermath on the news, but some of those stories had to be sensationalized. Animal sacrifices were a felony offense, but the Lapontes had been making them to him all week without growing new eyes or exploding into cosmic fire. Ritual magic was a step worse in the eyes of the law, but again, from what little Salem understood of what was happening, it seemed harmless in this instant.

The spell or whatever was intended to be a baptism, he was fairly sure. As best as he could tell, they were asking to be cleansed and reborn in servitude to a symbol that meant 'Deep One/Lightless Lord/Nyxian Primordial,' among other things. That was a reference to him, he supposed, though 'primordial' was a bit questionable; he was either eighteen years old or a week, depending on how you wanted to measure it. Perhaps in time, Salem could work with them to create a sigil that better represented him, if they didn't fry their souls with this ritual of theirs, that was.

Charlotte Laponte shuddered, pausing to look up from where she had been rocking back and forth in meditation. “He is here with us, Father,” she said excitedly. “He is curious and,” she quirked her head as if listening intently, “concerned.”

Charles and his nephew stopped their drawing. They were on their hands and knees on either side of the central pool in the Room of Respite, the other men busy getting Moose home safe.

“We are blessed,” said the patriarch. “Are you in contact?”

That was a very good question, Charles Laponte. He, too, would like to know the answer before he let his hopes rise. Thus far, his plans to contact the outer world involved waiting for Ginny Ennis to return and luring her into a small chamber where he could carve a basic rundown onto a wall. His childhood friend was clever, bold, and open-minded, and would look out for his best interests. The people of Dudlin had yet to realize that the cave system on the outskirts of town was alive, and were rightly wary of strange occurrences. The last thing he wanted was for them to immediately start gunning for a way to kill him. His Heart Room was still uncomfortably close to the surface.

But if Charlotte Laponte could directly communicate with him, then he saw no reason to not take advantage of the ability. Whatever else you could say about the clan, considering the risks they’d taken to worship him, they did seem to be on his side. While they probably had their best interests in mind rather than his, the occultists could at least be trusted to keep secrets. He would still prefer Ginny, but there was no reason he couldn’t have two messengers.

Charlotte quirked her head and hesitated. “Perhaps…I can’t tell. If Mother was here—”

“You are as capable as she. I wouldn’t have brought you if I didn’t believe that. Reach out.”

She gave a small nod and closed her eyes. If she was doing something more than that, then Salem couldn’t feel it. “There is…tremendous curiosity, but it is innocent in a way, childlike even.”

The man allowed himself a small, relieved smile. “Then your mother was correct. The oxymoron is true, a new Old God. Finally, after generations of abuse and exile, we may yet achieve a sanctum of our own.” Charles clapped his hands together and bowed his head in supplication. “Great One, know this: I speak for my Clan when I say that we mean you no insult, no harm. I come seeking what my family has been denied for a thousand years – a Covenant! Not the small pacts of my ancestors, but true Patronage! What says He, daughter?”

That was nice. Salem didn’t know what any of it meant, but it sounded flattering. Nor did he understand what his responsibilities as a Patron would be, but he had very little else going on these days; he could figure it out.

Though, he did have to note that Charles Laponte was a lot, and just the thought of having to work with him for extended periods of time was a bit exhausting. The man had only the one speed, Full, and he wasn’t sure he would be capable of dialing it back if Salem could even get him to try. Some of the doomsday preacher persona was obviously an act – there were no Bible references in private, for example, and he’d quietly and cynically instructed his sons to ingratiate themselves with Moose – but if anything, what lay beneath the surface was a deeper madness. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Worship empowered Salem, and no one else was making any offers. Laponte was a lunatic, but he could at least be his lunatic.

Well, hello, Charlotte had smiled slightly at his little psychic jab at her father just then. He needed more than that, though, to confirm she could hear him. He needed something concrete; everything she'd said thus far could still fall under the realm of cold reading and self-inflicted delusions.

Salem focused on the woman, blocking out all other sensations as best he could. The world fell away into blackness until all that was left in his mind was Charlotte Laponte. Among other things, he perceived the number of hairs on her body, the moisture content in her breath, and the arc of each of her breasts. The more he looked, the more he knew of her, and the more he knew, the more he wanted to know. There was so much to her: the striations in her grey irises, the way the veins on her neck popped as she clenched her jaw, the strands of hair clinging damply to the cold sweat on her forehead.

She reacted strongly, slapping the ground as she curled into a ball, muscles flexing and seizing as though he'd laid a great weight upon her. Her eyes grew bloodshot, and she made a choking, retching sound. He couldn't stop, though. She was enchanting, really, exceptionally beautiful now that he thought of it. Her raven locks, the dimples on her back, the swell of her hips, the flush on her pale skin, it was all quite…pleasant. He wanted her, not as a man wants a woman, but as an artist craves a muse. She could be his, his fascinator, his, his bauble—

That thought snapped him from his reverie. Had it sprung from his own mind, or was it a reaction to whatever power was inherent to the Laponte woman? The feeling had been so inhuman, so unlike him, or the person he’d been, at least. It was eldritch, truly unknown to him in his past life, and almost surpassed emotion for raw physical need. Whether it had been organic or not, he hated that he could evidently possess such greed within him.

She was taking shuddering breaths, tears running down her face. Salem attempted to project an apology into the room, as well as the fact that if the Lapontes were looking for a blessed spring, the centermost hot spring in the cavern was tied to a source of Life-magic. Though, of course, it was considerably more dangerous than his Room of Respite.

“It’s okay,” she muttered between breaths, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. “It’s okay. You honor me.” He believed her – half because of her tone, a mix of pride and awe, and half because neither Charles nor his nephew had reacted with anything but approval at the scene. There had been neither surprise nor concern from the men. Whatever had happened was apparently expected from her.

To her father, she said, “I had a vision of a source of enchanted spring in the cavern below, rich with the power of Life itself, but it came with a warning of the dangers. He will not protect us from them.”

Oh, right. He hadn’t even considered setting his monsters to subdue instead of kill…

Eh, you couldn't have an adventure without danger; anything else was just tourism. The risk was what made it worth it.

“Does He demand we move there?”

“No. It was offered with no comment and, well…”

“Speak.”

She blushed and turned away. “And as an apology to me for the way I reacted.”

“Is that so? Hm.” Fatherly approval flashed over his normally stoic expression. “Do not hide your face, daughter. You have been given grace from a God.” Charles returned to the task of drawing sigils, his nephew following in kind. “Time will teach you to endure; your mother struggled in the same way once. We are not here to deal with shadow men or woods’ spirits. We are here to engage in hubris. Your witchblood allows you to Commune, but no mortal can stand the presence of a true God for long.”

“Thank you, Father. Are we to stay in this chamber, then?”

“The government assassin fled for his life from the cavern while in full armor and armed to the teeth. If we were in number and the creatures below weren’t freshly stirred by violence, I would descend, but Jedidiah will not be enough to protect you while I am under. No offense, boy.”

“None taken, Uncle.”

“Nor will I wait. The Helcat provides us a measure of privacy that we will lose soon enough. Blyde is no fool; he will seek consultation for the mysteries he witnessed. He won't betray our secrets, not now that he owes us his life, but there is no way to speak of this place without speaking of its wonders. I still feel the droplets of numbing toxin from the glowworms on my wrist. A fast-acting and long-lasting anesthetic – others will descend in numbers for that alone. This pool shall do us for today. The water here cleans itself of impurities. That works well for our purpose."

Yes! Someone had already noticed the value of the glowworm poison! It was a topical anesthetic and mild paralytic but, in high enough doses, produced a general anesthetic effect that was, he hoped, considerably safer than morphine derivatives. The monsters used it to rapidly arrest the movement of their prey, but Salem had designed it with the dual medical purpose in mind. Once his caves grew into multi-day dives, he could imagine adventurers keeping vials of it on hand for use in emergencies.

That was excellent news. Salem had been worried that Moose had left without making any real insights into his creations. The Gardener Crabs were delicious and nutritious, but he doubted the man would want to engage with them again after today. Salem didn't regret giving them the ability to work in packs – Moose's face upon the realization had been far too funny for that, but it was a minor disappointment to be sure. And the Fire-flies were docile and easily kept in captivity, but Moose appeared to think of them only as hazards rather than the living lanterns and fire starters he'd intended them as. He liked the idea of having enchanted water be both a common hazard and Lure; in the future, the slow-burning, ooze-like fuel of the Fire-flies might be the only ignition source an average adventurer would have available in Salem's dank depths.

Now that he had some assurance that there would be an upcoming surge of energy as the news of Moose’s expedition filtered out, it felt only right to invest a little into helping the Lapontes. If Charles was being honest in his intentions, then the family would soon be his…Adherents? Followers? Whatever – they would have an intimate working relationship. And if not, it was still a good idea to encourage further worship.

Salem didn’t want to make the pool in the room as outright magical as the hot springs below. An adventurer should have to at least endure the effort to climb down if they wanted access to a source of power like that, but he could spice it up a little. The water was already enchanted to stay clean; he put some more power into the effect, such that it would be able to wick the dirt directly off someone’s skin.

When none of the occultists reacted, Salem tried to send a gentle vision of the changes to Charlotte. He didn't know if he could shape what she saw in her mind, but he tried to picture someone entering it dirty and leaving it spotless and clean. The woman shivered, started stroking her hair, and hid a smile from the others. Next to her, in the dust on the stone floor, she drew a small heart before quickly wiping it away, blushing bright red as she did.

Huh. Alright. He wasn't sure what he'd done wrong there, if anything, but at least she'd gotten something from the communication. Considering this was their first 'conversation', he would count that as a win.

They worked in silence from there, only speaking when necessary. It had been a long night and day of labor for them, having thrown themselves at the entrance tunnel with maximal effort. Charles Laponte, despite his age, was unflagging, fatigue nothing before his zeal, but Jedidiah was visibly fading, and even Charlotte, who’d done nothing but arrange flowers and pray, was hiding her yawns from her father.

Once the sigils were finished, they took turns inspecting them for mistakes, repeating the process until each could walk the circle thrice without finding any. Salem kept his thoughts quiet and merely watched with interest. After the circle had been filled with runes, the electric shivers had amped up, but he had no more feedback than that.

Satisfied with their work, Charles Laponte stripped off his boots, filled his pockets full of rocks, and slipped into the pool. Standing by the edge, he allowed his daughter and nephew to drape the heavy rope they’d used to save Moose around his neck and shoulders and waded into the center. Without needing to be told, Jedidiah took up one of the revolvers the group had brought with them and a pickaxe, and moved to stand guard on the other end of the tunnel, giving his cousin a firm pat on the shoulder on the way out. There were no tunnel wolves nearby, but Salem quickly closed off any cracks to the surface anyway, wanting nothing to interrupt the spectacle.

Charlotte took from their supplies three white candles and one black, placing each at points relative to one another. His own unconscious knowledge of his internal structures noted that the black candle at the head of the diamond she’d made pointed unerringly towards his Heart Room.

Speaking softly as she held a lit match to the first white candle, she said, “I invoke thee with my breath, yours forever to shape.”

There was an immediate tug on his mind and his stores of energy. From the ether, unbidden, came the knowledge that he could deny her here, and the candle would fail to light, but beyond tacit denial or acceptance, he would have no further sway over the mortal ritual.

He allowed the energy to flow out from him, and the wick lit no differently from any other candle.

She moved to the second white candle. “I invoke thee with my will, working only toward your ends.” Again, he allowed it. He could feel his power taking shape within the circle now, though the flowing matrices meant nothing to him.

Charlotte used no match for the third candle, instead slicing open her thumb and forefinger with a small razor blade and pinching the wick. Droplets of her blood flowed down and stained the white wax. “I invoke thee with my blood, each child borne from it yours to command.”

That was a bit much, he thought, but he was too curious to stop now. This time, when he allowed the power to flow forth, the candle lit on its own, burning hot enough to close the cuts on Charlotte’s fingers. Cool, he thought, in awe of the spell. The fact that he had created life not even the day prior did nothing to diminish his first taste of human magic after so many years of curiosity.

Finally, she knelt before the black candle and looked to her father. He gave her a nod, his face as stoic as ever. Salem had to wonder if this ritual came from some ancient tome, or if they were winging it off faith alone. Charles seemed capable of either in that moment – capable of anything, really, horrible or righteous, virtuous or sinful.

His deep voice boomed, reverberating unnaturally off the cave walls. “I invoke thee with my life, thus far wasted in service to false idols! Take it and do with it what you please. Amen.”

With that, he exhaled until his lungs were empty and sank into the pool.

Nothing happened; there was no tug on his power, not at first and not for a while. He and Charlotte Laponte watched as the pool stilled and the waves came to a perfect halt. Her father continued to hold himself down under the water at the bottom as minutes stretched on.

If Salem had a jaw, it would have been on the floor. Jesus Christ, this man was completely insane – far, far crazier than he could have imagined. The psychopath was drowning himself. Salem was sure the ropes and the stones in his pockets were helping him accomplish the suicide, but the psychopath was drowning himself. The degree of willpower required would have been unbelievable if he were not literally witnessing it, seeing in perfect clarity as the man's body began to jerk and seize as it died painfully. Charlotte saw only the pool, but he had a full view of the agony that was being wrought.

Minutes passed until he began to feel that tug on his energy again; it took, after all, some time to drown to death. Salem strongly contemplated disallowing the flow of power. This was a level of insanity he wasn’t sure he wanted anywhere near Dudlin, let alone within his cavernous halls. But, tragically, the act was done in his name and for his benefit, and he couldn’t bring himself to condemn Charles Laponte to death just because the man was extremely bad at reading the room.

Once he acquiesced, the energy surged out from him and into the circle at a rate that he hadn’t seen even when designing new species of life. The ritual drank in all of it, every scrap he had, until the black candle finally sputtered to life.

The second it was burning, Charles Laponte shot to the surface, took the first breath of his new life, and howled with pain. His hands clutched at the rope entangled around his head and neck and tore through the thick hemp as though it was paper, tossing the strands aside with such force that the thunderous cracks of them striking the cave wall gave him a start. He twitched away from the sound, accidentally throwing himself hard against the side of the pool and unleashing an enormous wave that soaked the room.

In awe of his strength, he pulled a stone from his pocket and held it aloft to his daughter and his nephew, who had sprinted back into the room at the noise. "Behold!" Closing his fist, he crushed the stone into dust. "We are delivered, children! A home at last!" To the ceiling, he bellowed, "Salem Cooper, my Lord, I shall build a kingdom for you! Speak, and thy Will be done!"

Charles closed his eyes and listened for his orders. In the same way that Salem couldn’t directly manipulate his creations, he couldn’t directly command the man, but there was a deep connection there, nevertheless. He projected his desires onto his newest 'monster.'

The man nodded without hesitation. "Yes, my Lord! I shall speak to your holy mother and inform her of your fate!" Salem projected a very important clarification. The man nodded once more. "Fear not. We shall, of course, be extremely discreet!"

Extremely normal, Salem thought at him again. He really needed Charles to know that he wanted him to be extremely normal about all of this.

It was no use, though. The Laponte patriarch had jumped out of the pool and was too busy hugging his daughter and swinging her in circles with joy to hear him. For the first time ever, laughter echoed through his stone halls.

Eh, it would probably be fine. Salem didn’t care enough about it to be a wet blanket and interrupt the celebrations. Besides, it was probably hopeless to ask for normalcy from Charles. Discretion was close enough.

……

“You ain’t a Finn, kid. You’re six-foot-four, built like a barn door – you’re a goddamn Moose!”

There were wet, rattling coughs from the foot of his bed, the sounds of lungs filling with fluid.

“…six-foot…four, built like a…heh.”

Moose closed his eyes tighter. He recognized that wheezing laugh, the gunshots in the distance, the sound of their radios going crazy as more men were picked off by mind control. He recognized the cold of the blood-soaked mud on his back and the dread and guilt of that night, as clear today as it was eleven years ago. Chemically induced sleep paralysis meant there would be no wriggling of toes, no breathing exercises to escape; he was stuck and would be for hours.

A voice, detached from but not unsympathetic to his pain, cut through the remembered noise. “Death will judge us for our sins. No point in lingering on them in Life.”

Thin fingers, soft and dexterous, wiped the sweat from his brow. His shivering ceased, and he opened his eyes to see a young man leaning down at his bedside. He wore the face of Salem Cooper, but it was only a well-crafted mask; the shadows cast on it moved under their own power, and the edges bled into the black background like watercolor blurring past sharp ink lines. Something about it was deeply and profoundly uncomfortable, if not outright terrifying to witness; there was something terribly alien about the mien. He felt his face contort with fear and worried momentarily that he had offended the entity, but it only quirked its head and smiled in response.

Moose watched, still frozen, as the boy turned almost dismissively and walked to his bedroom door, pulling it open to reveal a stone tunnel faintly lit by distant candlelight. 'Salem' continued through the threshold with the same casual pace, but he heard his voice once more whispered into his ears.

“Be it peace or be it power, all things are here for those who seek.”

He woke well-rested to the sound of distant barking – the dogs were chasing a coyote off the property – and Monty’s expectant face inches away from his own.

The cat flopped over onto him, drowning him in a pillow of grey fluff, and began purring in delight. "My friend! You're awake! Wonderful!"

Moose paused halfway to pushing the little menace off him. Did the cat just talk?

“Monty?”

“Hm? Yes?” It was the cat’s turn to freeze. He righted himself once more and started sniffing at Moose curiously. “Oho, what’s this? Finally learned to speak, did you? Well done! Though it’s no surprise to me, of course. I knew you were special since the day I walked into my house and adopted you. Looks like I continue to be right in everything I’ve done, do, and will do!”

Sheila grumbled skeptically from the foot of the bed.

“Hush, you! Now then, big man. Bring your nimble paws and follow me to the kitchen. Come along, Sheila, it’s breakfast time. I’ll need you to protect me from those overexcitable oafs of ours.”

“Okay!” barked the dog, tail wagging as she obeyed the considerably smaller forest cat. She stopped at the doorway and looked back at him with concern. “Are you alright, Moose?”

“Yeah. I’ll, uh, be right there.”

Moose continued to listen as Monty filled in Sheila on the happenings of the night prior as they made their way downstairs. The cat had apparently killed three snakes in the yard, though Moose could swear he heard the exaggeration in his tone.

He slapped himself hard – still awake. “What the fuck…”

There were those who came into their powers late, but generally, people’s powers did not expand to entirely new domains in their late thirties. They could deepen and sharpen through experience, trauma, or super-science; Moose wouldn’t have been surprised, for example, to develop a keener sense of smell after so many years of hunting beside dogs. That would have been a surprise, but it would have made sense, a logical next step. To suddenly be able to speak to cats after a lifetime of only being able to talk to dogs was…impossible, surely.

He didn’t even like cats. He liked cat, singular – his own. Moose had never wanted or intended to get Monty, but one day the overly familiar feline had walked in through the dog door as though he owned the place. The little man had been friendly enough, and the dogs loved him, so Moose had let him stay. Not that he had much of a say in the matter – once Monty had figured out the dog door, it had become his house, not Moose’s. But regardless, for as much as he now loved the cat, it wasn’t like he’d been yearning to talk to him. In no world could he point to some internal psychic awakening to explain what was happening.

This would require investigating, but before that, Monty was right. It was breakfast time.

His rotties, Kenneth Loggins and Jamiroquai, aka Kenny and Jammi, were still barking at a coyote past his fence that he was all but certain was long gone by now. After calling them in, Moose made breakfast for his strange little family, diced raw chicken for the animals, and the usual six-egg omelet on rye for himself. He half expected to wake up from a dream part-way through or to suddenly lose the power to speak to Monty, but no, it seemed he'd be enduring smug remarks from the cat for the foreseeable future.

The shock of that fact was so great that he was halfway through his shower before he realized he'd undergone other changes. Moose felt startlingly good in a way that couldn't be attributed to Regenerative Agent. RA9 could erase most injuries and age-related pains, but it did nothing for lactic build-up or the stiffness that came with years of not stretching properly. He should have been sore after the brutality of the mission yesterday, not to mention that his arm should have needed another week of patches to finish healing. Instead, he felt light on his feet and as loose as an old rubber band, like he'd just finished a full-body calisthenic workout but with none of the associated fatigue. It was like he'd stepped into a version of himself that was fifteen years younger and a lifelong gymnast.

Be it peace or be it power, all things are here for those who seek.

There was an obvious explanation for the changes, but his pride rejected it at first. Salem's Cave was his enemy, a wretched place that existed for his personal torment; it couldn’t have caused a second Becoming. He wouldn’t give it that. Moose wouldn’t allow the hellhole to be responsible for anything approaching a positive. So, after a long shower, he did the unthinkable – he went online and tried to investigate his powers.

This was the first time he'd ever formally or informally looked into them before, an odd place to be after two decades of not caring. It wasn't that he was an incurious person. He'd always had an idle desire to know more about his abilities, but he was old enough to remember the Cold War. There was an ever-present hysteria that surrounded superpowers back then. Anyone who could bend a spoon had been a potential Ottoman sympathizer, looking to bring their de facto state religion of super worship to America. Kids these days had no idea how bad it'd been. Now, supers were just government contractors and glorified mascots as miserable as everyone else, and if they weren't happy with the status quo, then there was nothing stopping them from moving to the Empire anymore.

He hadn’t had the luxury. Deliberate ignorance had been his coping mechanism to stay sane after his Becoming. It was better for everyone if they all, himself included, simply acted as though he was a regular guy who was good with dogs as opposed to, say, a man with one of the least useful superpowers in history. What would his LSR name have been, anyway? The WoofMan? Dogtor Dolittle? There was no level of stigma worth enduring for that.

The internet was remarkably unhelpful. He’d expected nothing and somehow got even less. Second Becomings either never happened, only happened through deliberate action via super-science, or were happening all the time. If he ignored whatever physical effects he had and just looked at his power branching out to cats, that too was likewise ambiguous. One researcher claimed it was possible for powers to make lateral leaps, but he was also selling a course on how to initiate the process and was a sex pest, according to most. Half of the reputable academic sources Moose found were paywalled, and the other half were in languages he didn't speak. It was, in short—

“Fucking stupid,” he said with a sigh, closing his laptop and stomping off to his home gym. He needed to clear his head.

Be it peace or be it power, all things are here for those who seek.

He already knew the answers he'd been searching for, just like he knew what he'd seen last night hadn't been a strange stress response to a week of sleep paralysis or the result of residual glowworm poison. It had been a visitation from some being wearing the face of Salem Cooper. Something had wormed its way into his head in the Cave and come home with him – the same something that had probably infected the Lapontes.

He’d fought cultists and revolutionaries before. The same all-consuming fervor and zealotry he’d seen on nameless and uncontested Pacific islands had claimed the Laponte Clan. Not that it was any business of his what they did. He was pretty sure he’d have noticed if they were up to human sacrifice or torture – there were barely four thousand people in and around Dudlin – and they’d saved his life now, too. As far as Moose was concerned, unless they were getting up to some really fucked up shit, they were free to be weird and creepy in peace.

The men had been extremely kind and gentle for any group, let alone a clan as notoriously reclusive as theirs. They had carried him down off the hill and into that loathsome entrance guarded by the Maiden statue. The mad bastards had mined the crack where Welly and Decker had been killed out into a proper hallway, though had left the tunnel wolf holes open in defiance of all reason and basic survival instinct. Had he been in a state to ask why, he was sure Charles Laponte would have said something along the lines of, ‘The Lord protects his righteous.’

Beyond the former crack, now hall, was a room cast in the hated light of glowworms, these thankfully much smaller than the maneaters he'd escaped. There, it became clear why they'd gone through the trouble of mining – they'd needed the space to bring their tools in. The Lapontes were planning to build in Salem’s Cave. There were hammer drills, masonry bolts, and aircraft wire, the makings of what you would need to anchor projects into the cave walls. Lunatics, clearly, but if they wanted to die trying to colonize that damp hell, then that was their prerogative.

More concerning were the signs that they were preparing to do a ritual in the room. It was nothing obvious; he doubted they’d have brought him there if they thought he’d notice, but it had once been his job to hunt the occult.

In the center of the room was a circular pool of crystal-clear water. One of the tools he’d seen was a tall stone breaker, essentially a heavy steel rod with a point; at the top, someone had tied a string in three knots spaced roughly identically apart from each other. At the other end of the string was a thick piece of chalk. His mind had immediately filled in intended use – the pool of water and the relatively cramped conditions precluded the normal means of drawing a perfect circle. Instead, someone would stand the rod in the pool and hold it tightly as a center point, then someone else would pull the string taught and draw one circle, undo the first knot, draw a slightly larger circle, and undo the second to do so again. In the space between the circles, they would inscribe their arcane sigils.

Moose didn’t love the thought of the Lapontes working magic inside the cave, but the only reason he knew – or suspected strongly, rather – was because they'd gone out of their way to save his life. He'd been raised better than to rat out his saviors. If it turned out they were hurting people, that would be a different story, but as taboo as it was to say, not all magic was black magic. There was a chance they were just 'normal' pagans, and considering what he owed them, he could at least give them the benefit of the doubt.

He had to say, though, if the bible thumping was all an act, then they were committed to it. Charles Laponte certainly believed wholeheartedly in the Gospel of the Good Samaritan. Under his orders, his boys, Thomas and Gareth, had fed and watered him, inspected his injuries, and stayed at his side until it was clear that the Regenerative Agent was winning out against the glowworm poison. After that, they helped him walk the long way back to his Jeep and offered to take him either to a doctor's or their own homestead for extended supervision. He declined, but they'd insisted, so he had them take him home. Once there, Gareth chopped up chicken for the animals while Thomas helped him get out of his armor and into his bed. Apart from a number of snide comments about his decision-making skills ("You couldn't have put a dang hat on, idiot?"), they'd been nothing but kind. They'd even offered an open invite to play basketball anytime he saw them at the public courts – the one place outside their homestead where you could reliably find the recluses. The invite had been wrapped in an insult ("You're big, but I bet you can't even ball."), but he preferred that, to be honest. It reminded him, pleasantly, of being back in the Army.

The Laponte Clan had earned his respect. They might have been gaunt, quietly menacing religious zealots, but they were alright where it mattered. Of course, that did mean he'd have to return their kindness one day, or at the very least look out for them when possible. That might come back to bite him, but that was the way of things. One moment, you were gunning down warlocks in the jungle, and the next, you were making plans to play pick-up basketball with them. Strange days, weren’t they?

Moose loaded the barbell in his garage with his usual warmup weight, a plate a side. He wasn’t sure what to think of it all. Life had been wonderfully simple a few weeks ago, when he could come home from a job he liked to a paid-off home full of animals he loved without thinking once about anything outside his immediate concern. He had his furniture making for a hobby, pets for friends, and his radio for entertainment. Now he was right back in the shit again, and without government benefits or air support this time.

The big man slid under the bar and unracked it, instantly recognizing the change. He did his usual twelve reps on the off chance that whatever was happening might simply disappear if he observed it for long enough, but like with Monty, it was pointless. He may as well have been pushing the bar alone.

“Holy shit.”

Moose stood, added another plate on each side of the bar, and then paused. On a hunch, he loaded it with another two a piece, for a total of eight plates or four hundred and five pounds. Six reps at this weight had been his max when he was in the Rangers, but that had been with all of the performance enhancers they’d pumped them with weekly.

The first rep was clean, the second was a challenge, and the third had him questioning why he was doing this without a spotter.

“Four-oh-five for three,” he said to the dogs once he’d caught his breath and the spots in his vision had disappeared. They had come to watch when he’d started grunting. “And that’s without a real warmup or having trained anything past three plates for years. This is fucked.”

“That looked fun!” barked Sheila.

Moose scratched his chest and thought about that. He couldn’t lie to himself; she was right. What man wouldn’t enjoy feeling a decade younger overnight?

Still, that made it no less concerning. Something unexplainable was happening to him. Or worse, something extremely explainable was happening to him related to Salem’s Cave – but either way, only a fool would let it go unexamined.

“Aw, goddamn it.” He rubbed his face, regretting not for the first time that he hadn’t moved with his brother and his wife to Boca Raton when they’d offered to put him up. “I’m going to have to tell Troyer about this.”

Jammi whined uncomfortably. “Troyer is a scary man.”

“Yeah…” God, he was going to have to tell him about his powers too, or else he’d only be shooting himself in the foot. The first person he was going to tell he was a super was Zachariah Troyer – how fucked was that? “Yeah, but I’ll have you guys to protect me, won’t I?” he added with a smile.

The dogs wagged their agreement and charged him, play fighting for pets and attention.

Oh, well, nothing to it but to do it.