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If the idiocy of Chaos could be said to possess a will, the eldritch god Azathoth had willed Nyarlathotep into existence to play a single role: messenger. Angel, in the original sense of the word. Throughout the Dreamlands, horrible things were whispered about the son of Azathoth, the Soul and Messenger of the Outer Gods. Yet at base Nyarlathotep was merely a fragment of Chaos released, made mobile, and sent crawling across the Omniverse to speak for the Ones whose true voices were a mindless buzz. . . a rhetorical device become unfortunately sentient.
He had other powers, certainly. Powers of what mortals called science, powers of destruction, powers of nightmare. But his greatest power lay in his words, for they held the strength to compel rather than force. Nyarlathotep's words shaped realities by convincing his listeners that they wanted what Nyarlathotep wanted, and most devastatingly, his words did so with the truth.
Nyarlathotep told the truth, always, but he always told it slant, for he believed firmly that Success in Circuit does indeed lie. He had plenty of evidence.
Once, Nyarlathotep had made a tour of one world in that multi-dimensional array known as “Earth,” using words to plunge its people into nightmares. The people came to hear those words willingly. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered, and eventually their nightmares covered the world with the snows of Kadath in the cold wastes.
Once, Nyarlathotep had stood before Randolph Carter in that very Kadath and rattled off a 2000-word speech (punctuated by a grand “for I am Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos!” as if Carter couldn't have figured it out for himself 1500 words ago) that sent the presumptuous dreamer willingly plunging into the void of Nonexistence atop a shantak.
Once, Nyarlathotep had drifted above the sunset sky-city of Serannian and spoken those words which may be the most devastating of all, or the most relieving, or both: “This is only a dream.” The citizens willingly repeated those words to themselves and awoke, and Serannian was no more.
The Crawling Chaos enjoyed recalling these victories and gloating over them. Sometimes he gloated to Hastur, his High Priest Not to Be Described; sometimes he gloated to Rubel, a sentient pansy some fool had once left Nyarlathotep as an offering; sometimes, he gloated to himself over his cleverness, when even Rubel wouldn't listen to him anymore. (Being pot-bound, she was quite literally a captive audience, but she had a nasty habit of interrupting him to repeat patiently, “You've already told me about that, Nyarly,” as if he were an elderly tree with dementia.)
Hastur would still listen. Hastur would always listen. Yet after listening, Hastur would remind him that time and again, Nyarlathotep's own words had defeated him in the long run.
Hastur would point out that Nyarlathotep's words had driven that particular variant of Earth so mad that they ceased to hear him at all and were no longer aware of anything save the whining piping of the divine flutes which kept Azathoth dead and dreaming. Conquering a world with his cleverness didn't amount to much when that world couldn't remember his brilliance afterward.
Hastur would remind Nyarlathotep that his words had stirred in Randolph Carter such longing for his home that he remembered he was dreaming and woke up, thus utterly baffling Nyarlathotep and escaping his clutches forever.
Hastur would recall how that same reminder—“This is only a dream”—had destroyed Serannian but then also restored it, when it occurred to a small band of sentient airships that something dreamed once could be dreamed again. They had prayed for aid from the Omniverse's dreamers, the dreamers had dreamed, and Serannian had popped back into existence even more beautiful than before.
Nyarlathotep had loathed balloons ever since, almost as much as he loathed Hastur for pointing out so reasonably that the victories of the Crawling Chaos's words were always fleeting and inevitably collapsed into his defeat.
The worst thing about it was that, unlike the balloons, Hastur mattered. Nyarlathotep didn't need him, but he did rely upon Hastur to bring him offerings left at his temple in Sarkomand, including Rubel that one time. And because of that one time, Nyarlathotep also relied upon Hastur to visit Kadath on a regular basis since for some inexplicable reason, Rubel was fond of him.
When she hadn't seen him in a while, she pestered Nyarlathotep to “ask Hastur to come over” until he summoned his High Priest to her greenhouse room adjacent to his own throne room. (Only because the addition was a simple matter of willing it into existence. Nyarlathotep had so ingrained himself into Kadath that it responded to his wishes almost as if it were an extension of him, and he literally hadn't had to lift a finger when he created the greenhouse and the invisible sun which kept it warm.)
Every time Nyarlathotep sent the summons, he made sure to inform Hastur that it came at Rubel's behest, not his own, and that he was only humoring her because she would nag him into Nonexistence if he didn't. He didn't want anyone thinking that he “invited Hastur over” because he desired Rubel's happiness. He certainly didn't want anyone thinking he did it because Hastur's company made him happy.
Hastur's company doesn't make me happy, Nyarlathotep assured himself when he manifested in Hastur's own kingdom of Carcosa one afternoon. Hastur had ruled Carcosa as the King in Yellow since long before he accepted the role of High Priest of the Crawling Chaos, and on top of that, he had adopted two human girls as his own daughters for reasons Nyarlathotep pretended not to fathom. Thus, Hastur spent far more time in Carcosa than in Kadath.
Which makes no difference to me, thought Nyarlathotep as he stood in front of the closed doors to Hastur's study, where he knew his High Priest would be at that time of day. Nyarlathotep had materialized outside the study rather than within because slamming the doors open for a dramatic entrance would be more impressive than simply appearing, particularly since he had a grievance to declare.
Hastur simply serves a function, that is all. If that function has now expanded to include him visiting Rubel in her greenhouse, and me attending his masquerades at the invitation of his daughters, and the two of us. . . spending time together, it doesn't mean anything!
Nyarlathotep huffed in a sharp exhale of breath—breath his constructed humanoid body didn't technically need—and smoothed down his iridescent white robes. He might have appeared in a more threatening-looking form if he'd been dealing with anyone else, but Hastur had never acted intimidated by Nyarlathotep no matter how many teeth and tentacles he decorated himself with. Besides, Nyarlathotep was of the opinion that beauty could convey anger far more effectively than monstrosity could.
Therefore, he'd come to Carcosa in his favored guise of a young human pharaoh, arrayed in his full regalia of golden jewelry and double-crown. Before departing Kadath, he'd paused to admire his reflection in one of the greenhouse windows that remained where Nyarlathotep had placed it, unlike a certain other window he intended to discuss with Hastur. He looked terrible and magnificent.
Then Rubel had contributed her opinion: “You look really pretty, Nyarly! Hastur's gonna think so too.”
Nyarlathotep's elegant ringed hands had curled into fists at his sides as he glared at the reflection of the crimson and yellow pansy on her plant stand behind him. He informed her, “I am not pretty. I am terrible and magnificent.”
“If you say so,” Rubel had replied, shrugging her pair of leaves. “But Hastur's still gonna think you're pretty. He likes it when you look like that—like a human, I mean. Better than when you look like a big starfish with an eyeball in its middle. And way better than when you're just a ball of those wiggly worm-looking things—”
“Rubel. I don't care about Hastur's preferences,” Nyarlathotep had interrupted loftily as he frowned at his reflection before adjusting two strands of hair that were out of alignment with the others. “And how would you know what those are, anyway? He hasn't. . . told you he likes this form. Has he?” He cut his eyes back to the flower's reflection suspiciously.
Rubel had shaken her blossom from side to side. “No. But I can tell by the way he looks at you when you're wearing that body. Especially when you're not paying attention.”
“Hastur does not look at me any way,” Nyarlathotep had growled, finally turning to face her despite the faint flush he could feel across his traitorous body's face. “Hastur does not have eyes. At least no visible ones, and his face is immobile.”
“He still looks at you like he likes that body,” retorted Rubel. “He tilts his head different, and his wings kind of open up a little.”
Nyarlathotep had pointed a long finger with a shimmering golden nail at Rubel and declared, “Silence, weed. I am leaving.”
Undeterred, Rubel had said cheerfully, “Okay! Have a good time in Carcosa! Just don't have such a good time that you forget to come home tonight. I'm supposed to get fertilizer with my water today, and you haven't given me any yet.”
Nyarlathotep had almost tessered off to Carcosa with no reply except a roll of his dark eyes, but instead, he'd lingered just long enough to sigh, “I will not forget to fertilize you, Rubel. Goodbye.”
And so, Nyarlathotep now stood poised in front of the doors to Hastur's study in his most beautiful form. He grasped the doors' handles, flung them open, and made exactly the dramatic entrance he'd envisioned—terrible and magnificent.
Hastur was in the study, standing over an obnoxiously large table covered in parchments, and he didn't look up when Nyarlathotep burst in. The mostly performative scowl on Nyarlathotep's face deepened into a real one as his eyes swept the room to see if anything there merited Hastur's attention more than he.
Nothing did, of course. Like the table and many other things in the palace, the room was obnoxiously large; like almost everything in Carcosa, it was obnoxiously yellow. A vast, fringed saffron carpet covered most of the floor, and heavy drapes of the same color framed an enormous window behind the table, opposite the doors. Even the afternoon sunlight streaming in was yellow, issued from the twin suns preparing themselves to sink beneath Lake Hali, visible outside the window.
Nyarlathotep's eyes jerked from the window back to Hastur. Hastur too was obnoxiously yellow, save for the pale hands and mask-like face visible from within the folds of his ochre robes. His gray wings were drawn in too closely to his back for Nyarlathotep to see them.
When Hastur still didn't look at him, Nyarlathotep snapped, “High Priest!”
Hastur finally lifted his bent head, turning his face towards Nyarlathotep rather than whatever was scrawled on the parchments.
“Good afternoon.”
“It is not,” declared Nyarlathotep.
“Indeed?” Hastur asked mildly.
Nyarlathotep exploded, “Don't 'Indeed?' me like I'm one of your daughters! It is not a good afternoon, and you know why.”
Without speaking, Hastur tilted his head an infinitesimal degree to one side. Only those extremely familiar with him would have noticed the gesture at all, such as his daughters and now Rubel, apparently. Nyarlathotep could read it as well, and to him the infuriating tilt said quite clearly, “I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.”
Even more infuriating was the fact that Hastur likely didn't know what Nyarlathotep was talking about until the latter enlightened him, “You moved Rubel's window.”
His head still tilted, Hastur asked, “Which one? Rubel's room has several windows.”
“The one you moved, obviously,” replied Nyarlathotep. “The largest one, directly across from the doors to the throne room. Its angle has been shifted, and when I questioned her about it, she said you shifted it.”
“Oh. That.” Hastur again turned his face downward towards his table, though he did so in order to gather the parchments together into a stack. “Yes, I adjusted it the last time I was at Kadath because you'd placed it at an angle that didn't take full advantage of her sun's position. Or perhaps your placement of the sun didn't take full advantage of the window, but Kadath was less resistant to me adjusting the window than the sun.”
Nyarlathotep retorted, “Kadath should not have tolerated any of your so-called adjustments. Rubel is an extremely sensitive blossom, and I have arranged the greenhouse to provide her with the precise amount of warmth, light, and humidity she needs! I cannot have just anyone waltzing in and changing things!”
“I did not 'just waltz in,'” Hastur said.
“I didn't mean you literally waltzed, you pedantic—”
Speaking over him, Hastur continued, “I was invited in, by you and more importantly by Rubel.”
“What do you mean, more importantly?!” Nyarlathotep's voice rose to a pitch that would send most entities cowering. Hastur's only reaction was to straighten the tilt of his head into a patiently imperious position Nyarlathotep especially hated.
“I mean that it is Rubel's space, and if she said I wasn't welcome there, I would leave,” Hastur replied. “That said, the greenhouse is part of Kadath, and I was there because you'd summoned me.”
Nyarlathotep reminded him tersely, “Only because Rubel asked for you.”
“Indeed.” It wasn't a question this time, which Nyarlathotep decided was even more infuriating than when it was. “But my point is that regardless of the reason, you wanted me there. If you hadn't, I would not have been able to adjust any part of the environment, not even the window. Kadath simply wouldn't have responded to my efforts.”
Nyarlathotep knew this perfectly well, and that was the crux of his grievance: not only that Hastur had changed something in Nyarlathotep's domain, but that he had been able to change something. That Kadath had adapted to Hastur's wishes as if they were Nyarlathotep's wishes.
Nyarlathotep's slender hands again curled into fists at his sides. Hastur either did not notice or pretended not to.
“Regardless, Rubel did not complain about the adjustments. In fact, she thanked me,” Hastur went on. “Besides, it happened several days ago. If you're only just now noticing the change, it can't have made much difference to you.”
“The difference is not the problem,” growled Nyarlathotep. “The problem is—” He broke off when he heard through the study's open doors the sound of two people in the corridor outside having a murmured conversation. Nyarlathotep didn't turn to see who they were—servants, most likely—but when the sound grew more distinct as the speakers drew closer, both of the heavy doors slammed closed.
One of the tentacles visible within a fold of Hastur's robe twitched, and after a moment, he said, “For someone who objects to my influence on Kadath's windows, you're being quite free with Carcosa's doors.”
“It's not the same thing at all,” Nyarlathotep retorted. “I closed the doors because this is a private discussion. I didn't move them out of a mistaken belief that I know more than you about the proper placement of egresses in your own castle!” When his voice rose, the obnoxiously large room drew a little closer around him. As with the doors, Nyarlathotep did not consciously move anything; Carcosa simply adapted itself to him of its own accord.
It shouldn't have, no more than Kadath should have adapted itself to Hastur, but that did not occur to Nyarlathotep at the moment. Perhaps it occurred to Hastur, for when he turned his crowned and hooded head towards one wall, that piece of architecture and its mate across the room widened their stance and drew back again.
Then Hastur faced Nyarlathotep and observed, “You aren't only angry about the window.”
“No. I am quite capable of being angry about more than one thing at a time, after all,” Nyarlathotep informed him. “As I was saying, the difference in the window's placement is not the problem. The problem is the principle of the thing: you changed something in my domain without consulting me.”
“I consulted Rubel. The greenhouse is her domain.”
“The greenhouse,” hissed Nyarlathotep, “is part of Kadath. Kadath is mine.”
The walls drew closer around him again. Hastur's tentacle did not merely twitch but made a quick, lashing motion in the air before stilling once more, and though the walls didn't retreat, the sunlight of the twin Hyades beyond the window grew slightly dimmer.
But Hastur's deep voice remained steady and inflectionless as he replied, “Yes. Kadath is yours. It became yours when you appropriated it from the Great Ones of Earth and shaped it to your will. And because you stole it, you guard it all the more jealously—jealously enough that you came all the way to Carcosa just to quarrel with me over a window.”
Nyarlathotep's delicate upper lip curled slightly as he spat, “I am not quarreling, and as I've told you three times now, this isn't about the damn window! Or your judgment of me for taking over Kadath from a gaggle of foolish local gods too weak to manage it properly! Do you think your disapproval matters to me, High Priest?”
Hastur's wings flared open, not fully but wide enough for Nyarlathotep to see them on either side of him. The walls already being at some distance from Hastur, the ceiling now chose to draw itself further upward on his end of the room, even as it hung lower over Nyarlathotep's.
Still, the tone of Hastur's damnable voice did not alter when he replied, “I think it matters to you far more than you care to admit to either of us, Nyarlathotep.”
“How dare you,” Nyarlathotep breathed as he drew himself up to his full height in affront. He wasn't sure which offended him more: Hastur calling him by his chosen name like it was some kind of weapon, or what Hastur had actually said.
“I dare because no one else will,” declared Hastur.
“No one else will dare what? To correct me?” Nyarlathotep scoffed. Unlike Hastur's deep voice, his lighter and more musical one trembled a little—from anger, certainly. “No one else dares tell me I'm wrong, but you delight in it. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that you deigned to become my High Priest! Otherwise, I wouldn't have a paragon of morality to accuse me of occupying Kadath unfairly, or to remind me that my own words always turn on me, or to adjust my damn windows when I manifest them at an angle you disapprove of—”
Nyarlathotep broke off again when a creaking sound cut through his tirade. He didn't even know where the noise had come from until he realized that Hastur was now standing in front of his table rather than behind it. He hadn't stepped around it or even through it; the table had simply decided that Hastur wanted nothing between him and Nyarlathotep, and had adjusted its position accordingly.
“Now I know why you are angry,” Hastur muttered. His wings had drawn in closer to his body, but they spread once more in agitation when Nyarlathotep deliberately shifted his stance to cock his hips to one side and brace a hand upon the uppermost one in an attitude of nonchalance.
“Oh? Then enlighten me,” he taunted.
Hastur moved closer, stepping forward not on feet but on the mass of tentacles beneath his robes. The tips of several of them protruded from beneath the hem, flicking at the carpet and curling.
“I moved the window to give Rubel more light, not to highlight some error on your part. Yet you are angry at me because you so hate to be wrong that you can't bear anything you perceive as correction, even when it isn't,” he said.
The stone columns on the walls to either side of Hastur bowed outward a little as he continued, “And you are angry at Kadath because you are jealous.”
“Jealous?” scoffed Nyarlathotep, lifting his free hand to flick his hair back from his face. The walls' columns nearest him bowed inward. “I am angry at a nonsentient tower of crystal, because I'm jealous of you?”
“Yes, of me—because Kadath responded to my will. Just as Carcosa now responds to yours.”
Once more, Hastur drew a step closer. Nyarlathotep straightened up again and folded his bare arms across his chest in a position he meant to be defiant yet somehow felt self-protective instead.
“Hmph. It does respond to me, doesn't it?” gloated Nyarlathotep though as with his folded arms, his words came out more defensive than he'd intended.
“Yes. And that is the most significant reason you are angry: you are afraid,” said Hastur.
Nyarlathotep had almost rolled his eyes at Rubel; he did roll them now at Hastur.
“Oh, so first I'm jealous of you, and now I'm afraid of you? Your ego knows no limits, High Priest. King.”
“I never said you are afraid of me.” Now, finally, Nyarlathotep could hear in Hastur's voice what he saw in the room's architecture. It remained deep and resonant, but it also sounded thicker, more frustrated. . . angrier. Hastur continued, “You are afraid of what it means when Kadath responds to me, and what it means when Carcosa responds to you.”
Nyarlathotep laughed—sharp, bitter—and the column to his right cracked. A thin, jagged line snaked through the stone from ceiling to floor, but Nyarlathotep felt no triumph in his having such an effect on the King in Yellow's domain. Instead, Carcosa seemed determined to prove Hastur's point for him, and Nyarlathotep refused to acknowledge the crack with so much as a glance.
“It means nothing,” he growled. His black hair fluttered around his face as if caught in a desert wind before settling; he wasn't certain whether that was Carcosa's doing or his own subconscious attempt at a dramatic special effect. “So you shifted a window in Kadath by a few degrees. All that indicates is that you're more powerful than anyone else who's graced my castle with their presence. Congratulations. And as for Carcosa's response to me? All that indicates is my own power. Reality responds to me, for I am the Crawling Chaos!”
Hastur did not step closer, yet he suddenly stood directly in front of Nyarlathotep, close enough that Nyarlathotep had to raise his chin to look into his inscrutable face. Hastur hadn't moved; the room hadn't moved him either. Instead, it had displaced itself around its King so that he now stood exactly where he wanted to be: looming over the god he served.
“Yes, you are the Crawling Chaos,” said Hastur, “and that means nothing in the face of your fears. They persist despite your continual denial of them.”
“'Continual denial,'” Nyarlathotep repeated sarcastically. “How tedious you make me sound.”
One of the tentacles extending from beneath Hastur's hem lashed against the carpet, and the crack of another column sounded from somewhere behind him.
“What makes you sound tedious is the endless drone of your own voice!” he snarled. “In the words of one of those human dreamers you so despise, it is 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'”
Nyarlathotep stared up into the blankness beneath Hastur's crowned hood, starry dark eyes wide. Then he smiled, as sharp and bitter as his laugh, and the column to his right crumbled. If it had been weight-bearing rather than purely decorative, the ceiling would have collapsed.
“I know the dreamer, and I know the line. You have neglected to quote the first half of it,” Nyarlathotep murmured. He let his eyes fall closed so he wouldn't have to see the judgment of that blank stare as he spoke the words Hastur had so tactfully omitted.
“'It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' And you're finally wrong about something, Hastur. It's not my voice. Not my words, for I am words. The tedious tale told by Azathoth the idiot god is me.”
Hastur's tentacle pressed into the plush saffron pile of the carpet, moving against it in a slow pulse. Nyarlathotep didn't have to see the movement to sense it and its expression of agitation.
“That is not what I meant,” said Hastur after a moment.
“Yes, it is.”
“Nyarlathotep—”
Nyarlathotep's eyes flew open, and he hissed, “Don't.” Hastur's face above him seemed blurry, and Nyarlathotep understood with a sinking feeling of dread that his beautifully constructed body had committed the ultimate betrayal: he was weeping. He started to reach up, paused, then upon realizing that the tears were beyond hiding, brought his hand to his face and smeared them from his eyes with the back of it.
“Don't what?” asked Hastur. His voice was still tight with anger, yet now with restraint as well. Nyarlathotep hated that restraint, hated Hastur for still possessing even a modicum of it while Carcosa broke itself into pieces around them.
“Don't speak my name,” growled Nyarlathotep. “Not like that—as if Chaos is some wounded beast you can calm with your pity!”
Now Hastur's were the hands clenching into fists. Nyarlathotep's could not; they were gripping his own folded arms.
“I have no pity for you,” said Hastur. He did not raise his voice, but he raised his wings, high enough that they almost brushed the cowering ceiling. “Not now.”
“Call it something else if you like! I loathe it nevertheless—whatever it is that grants you the solemn restraint to pretend you are not as angry as I am!”
Hastur returned, “I am not pretending I am not angry.” At that word—“angry”—the dimmed shine of the Hyades flared bright again, filling the room with yellow light that looked warm but felt cold on Nyarlathotep's burning face. The ceiling above their heads groaned as a beam splintered and barely held. Nyarlathotep couldn't tell if the room was answering Hastur's will, his will, or both at once.
“I am angry,” Hastur went on, his voice never hesitating, his empty gaze never wavering from Nyarlathotep's watering eyes. “And like you, I am angry because I am afraid.”
“Afraid,” Nyarlathotep repeated, incredulous not that Hastur might fear him but that he would admit it. “Because of me?”
Despite the admission, he thought Hastur might turn his earlier words back on him and say something witty and grandiose like, “Your ego knows even fewer limits than my own.” Yet instead, Hastur gave a single, slow nod of his head.
“Yes,” he said. “I am afraid because of you, though not in the way you may think. You could annihilate me if you so chose, but your power does not frighten me. Neither does your cruelty. I hate it, but it does not frighten me. What frightens me is how you hurt yourself with your own fears.”
Nyarlathotep scowled. “Oh, so we're back to my supposed fears, only now they're draped in your self-righteous pity.”
“Be quiet!” Hastur's voice did not grow louder, but he issued that command with all the force of a shout. “I told you, I have no pity for you. And I make no suppositions about your fears—I don't have to. I have spent eons at your side, Nyarlathotep, and I know your fears. You fear desire, so you warp it into conquest. You fear grief, so you mask it with anger. You fear love, so you try to make yourself into something unlovable, time and again. And time and again, you fail.”
Nyarlathotep's throat ached and his eyes filled anew as he hissed, “Stop.”
“No,” said Hastur. His wings flapped once, striking the ceiling then the walls, and several more tentacles slipped free of his robes to writhe and curl upon the carpet. Carcosa throbbed around him, the room somehow fleeing from him and drawing closer to him at the same time. Nyarlathotep felt as if his own body wanted to do both as well, but he could not make it move in either direction. He could only stand and listen to Hastur, and for the first time, he understood something of how Hastur must have always felt listening to him.
In that same tight voice, Hastur said, “I have stopped too many times. I have kept silent while you wound yourself and call it strategy, because you would laugh if I said your pain hurts me. I have kept silent while you drive away all who would care for you, because you would laugh if I said you feared abandonment. I have kept silent while you mocked love—my love for my daughters, my citizens' love for me, Rubel's love for you—because you would laugh if I said you are terrified of being loved. But laughter cannot change the truth: you are afraid. And I am tired of letting you pretend otherwise.”
They stood there, Hastur looking down and Nyarlathotep looking up, so close that their robes almost touched. Nyarlathotep's narrow chest heaved with rapid breaths he shouldn't need to take before he demanded, “Why, then? If I am so intolerable that even you have lost your patience, then why stay? You were the King in Yellow long before you chose to become my High Priest. You have a kingdom to worship you, you have a family to love you. You don't need me.”
Hastur did not reply, as if one tirade had used up all the words he had in him. He had refused to stop speaking when Nyarlathotep commanded silence; now he refused to speak when Nyarlathotep demanded answers.
“You accuse me of denying the truth, so give it to me,” he growled up at Hastur through clenched teeth. He could taste salt between them from where the tears he couldn't wipe away had run into his mouth. “Tell me why you stay, if not out of pity. For the challenge of serving Azathoth's spawn and shielding the Omniverse from his machinations? Or do you stay because leaving would prove me right and you can't bear the thought of it?”
Finally, Hastur spoke: “. . . Prove you right?”
“Yes.” Nyarlathotep's shoulders hitched beneath his golden collar. “Prove that I am right to be afraid!”
After that, silence stretched out between them. Slowly, Hastur lifted both hands towards Nyarlathotep's face then hesitated, hands hovering a scant inch from his jaws. Part of Nyarlathotep wanted to draw back, to strike them away, even to bite them—anything to avoid Hastur's touch.
But the greater part of him overcame it, and he didn't move. Hastur laid his hands against Nyarlathotep's jaws, long pale fingers curling under them to cradle his face. He knew Hastur was still angry—those tentacles kept writhing against the carpet—yet his touch was gentle, like Nyarlathotep was something fragile and precious.
That same small part of Nyarlathotep hated it, and he let go of his own arms to grip Hastur's instead, dark fingers bunching the heavy fabric of his robes between them. He meant to use that grip to push Hastur away. Instead, he clung.
Hastur bowed his head, so low that his high forehead almost touched Nyarlathotep's. They would have touched, except the crowns they both wore prevented it. . . until Nyarlathotep's vanished. He didn't consciously dispense with it, any more than he had consciously altered Carcosa around him. But it vanished, and an instant later, so did Hastur's.
Still cupping the Crawling Chaos's face in his hands, the King in Yellow pressed their foreheads together. When Hastur spoke, Nyarlathotep could feel the resonance of his voice.
“I love you. I should have said it long ago.”
Nyarlathotep's grip on the yellow sleeves tightened.
“You shouldn't have said it at all,” he muttered, yet he made no effort to pull away.
“You asked,” Hastur replied. “You asked why I stay with you, and that is your answer. I cannot bear justifying your fears, not because I want you to be wrong, but because I want you to stop being afraid. Because I love you.”
Nyarlathotep closed his teary eyes and bared his teeth to hiss, “I hate you.”
Even without breath, Hastur sighed. “No, you don't.”
“I hate that you can say it, then,” Nyarlathotep amended testily. “I hate—I hate that I want you to say it.” As he fell silent, his grip tightened still further, and Hastur's fingers clenched over his jaws. Holding Nyarlathotep's head still, he lifted his own enough to press the lower part of his face to Nyarlathotep's brow like a mouthless caress.
“You are more than words,” said Hastur fiercely, and Nyarlathotep could feel the resonance through his whole constructed skull. “More than a voice. You are sound and fury, but you do signify. And I listen.”
“I loved you for it.”
Nyarlathotep hadn't intended to say it, hadn't meant to signify that, but it was too late now to stop. He swallowed past the ache in his throat and whispered, “I tried not to. I am the Crawling Chaos, the soul and messenger of the Other Gods. I was made to speak for them, nothing more. I wasn't made to love.”
He paused. Hastur's wings lowered and spread, curling slightly to the sides of their two bodies.
“Then,” murmured Nyarlathotep, “you came, and you listened when I spoke for myself. I loved you for it, but that isn't the part I hate. What I hate is that now, I love you for everything. Not just because you listen to me, but because you're you. Patient, and infuriating, and the king of this ridiculous city, and on top of everything else, a girl dad.”
“A. . . what?” Hastur asked after another pause.
Nyarlathotep exhaled sharply. “A father of daughters who have him wrapped around their little fingers.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Does the term apply if the daughter possesses leaves instead of fingers?”
The Crawling Chaos made a helpless, watery little sound that was half indignation and half laughter, and the wings of the King in Yellow folded around him. Nyarlathotep's breath drew in again, and his fingers unclenched, spreading to hold Hastur's arms instead of grip the fabric of his sleeves.
“Whatever it is you are implying, I resent it. The term 'girl dad' most certainly does not apply,” Nyarlathotep said.
“No?” Hastur's voice no longer sounded tight or restrained. Instead, the single word he spoke held catharsis and exhaustion and most of all, relief.
“No. I. . . believe the proper terminology is 'plant dad,' instead.”
Hastur laughed, not audibly but with a subsonic vibration Nyarlathotep felt through his whole body. Then he felt that body drawn nearer and pressed to Hastur's by a tentacle that had somehow wrapped itself around his waist when he wasn't paying attention. He stiffened.
“I am still angry,” Nyarlathotep informed Hastur. He turned his head enough to break contact between their faces and looked at the room in shambles around them. Cracked stone. Splintered wood. Hastur's papers scattered across the floor despite the table's best efforts to remain under them throughout the crisis.
“I know. So am I,” Hastur replied.
Then Nyarlathotep noticed over Hastur's shoulder that the light of the setting suns through the window glowed golden now instead of merely yellow. It was warm instead of cold. It was also in his eyes. Nyarlathotep closed them and pressed his face into the crook between Hastur's long neck and broad shoulder. Hastur's hands shifted from his jaws, one moving to the back of his neck and the other to the back of his head, fingers threading into his silky black hair. The tentacle settled itself more snugly around Nyarlathotep's slender waist, and Hastur's wings folded closer as if sheltering them both from the destruction they'd caused.
One of Nyarlathotep's hands slipped from Hastur's arm to rest on his chest instead, feeling the firmness of the body he'd never seen, somewhere beneath the heavy robes. His other arm moved as well and curled around Hastur's back. Unnoticed by either of them, the papers were now scattered across the table instead of the floor.
The Hyades had sunk halfway into Lake Hali before Nyarlathotep spoke again, the words muttered against Hastur's shoulder: “I should return to Kadath. Rubel requires fertilizing, and she made sure to remind me to come home tonight and do it. As I said, she is a very sensitive blossom.”
“So are you,” said Hastur.
“Oh shut up,” Nyarlathotep grumbled. “Girl dad.”
“Brat.”
Nyarlathotep's face flushed far deeper than it had back in the greenhouse. His heart had slowed and then forgotten to beat altogether once he calmed down, but now it reasserted itself with several thumps he felt throughout his entire body.
If Hastur noticed, he pretended not to. He rested his smooth cheek against Nyarlathotep's hair and echoed, “You should return to Kadath.”
Neither of them moved. Carcosa didn't move either, yet the crack in Nyarlathotep's column quietly mortared itself. The ceiling hanging low above their heads slunk back into its proper position and gathered its damaged beam into place beneath it. The wood remained splintered, but it held.
“In a moment,” mumbled Nyarlathotep.
By the time that moment passed and the Crawling Chaos returned to Kadath in the cold wastes—and the flower waiting for him there in her warm oasis—Carcosa's twin suns had long since sunk beneath the lake.
–
The End