Leviathan

[Doomguy]

Crescent Lagoon Catacombs

There was a noticeable difference to the tunnels under the buildings, something that I could feel even before I landed into the roughly hewed floor below. I could feel the still, moist, cold air cling to my skin after I had been out in the tropic breeze for so long. No longer was it the smell of fish that I had to suffer through, but a overpowering stench of rot that washed over me. And what was the cause was not to far from where I landed. Disemboweled bodies dotted the room, half submerged in pools of standing water and other liquids I'd rather not think about. There was barely enough light coming in from the building above, but I could see the shredded remains of the clothing. Same kind of style as Choprot's crew wore, with small style changes marking. Looks like I found the missing ship crews. And I plan to not be along with them. I stared at the hard rock tunnel ahead of me and steeled myself against what was ahead as I moved forward.

I raced through the corridors, shotgun aimed ahead of me as I dared for something, anything, to pop out of the poorly mined walls. The chanting turned to wailing that pierced through my helmet as I drew closer to the source. Whatever foul deed these monsters had in mind, I had to stop them now. But in this underground expanse there was no landmarks bar the occasional florescent moss, nor was there rhyme or reason to the twisting tunnels, and too many times I felt like they had turned in on themselves. And there was always the constant threat of more of those fish faces popping up and trying to attack me again. But this time I was prepared, and if they wanted to mess with me I would be taking their bits in payment.

For what feel like an agonizing minute of finding my way through roughly carved corridors and crisscrossing passageways, I finally made some kind of headway. A large room spread out before me, long enough that you could barely see the end of it through the shadows and poor lighting. That didn't make the sudden change in architecture any less obvious. Were as the passages I had been running through were shoddily made and much more recent looking, the walls of this room was carved to a flat plane and decorated with runes of some unknown origin, and the layer of crust and vegetation marked is as something very, very old. It felt like something that may have existed longer than the universe itself, summoned in form another dimension like everyone else in the blasted place. And perhaps the people who dug up the base above had a nasty surprise when they dug out the lagoon and had fish faced bastards swarming them. More bodies stacked up here, these ones being a bit more in tact than the refuge in the first room. "Refuge" may have been closer to the truth than I wanted it to be, and this was a macabre stockroom. At least the bodies weren't decorated on spikes and hanging chains, making it still a step up above Hell. But that's a low bar to clear.

Moving inwards I could see the end of the room. A large arch made of stones as big as I am lead into a bigger room, a set of spiral walkways spinning counter to each other with doorways at semi regular intervals, and a view down to the bottom which looked flooded with water. Where the chanting was the loudest, and I could see those fish headed bastards walking through the muck. And the leading fishman with the spear was with them. I could kill two birds with one rocket, and then I was out of this madcap water park. But I couldn't just launch a shot into the hole, as while I was aiming the rocket launcher down I heard a wheezing breath to my side. A hybrid had ruined his ambush for his buddies and a few of the pure fish-men when they had planned to surprise me. And they were about to eat shit for not being a bit quicker.

I wheeled the death dealer in my hands at the attackers, who had now simply tried to bum rush me when they figured I found them, and while they raised whatever ad-hoc weapons at I pulled the trigger and a frag rocket zoomed down at them. The one in the lead, a pure one with a hammer made of some creature's skull, took the explosive like a sack of a crap and when the explosion ripped through with a mighty flash of energy his bits had about the same consistency. His friend closest behind him didn't fair much better, shrapnel embedding in the parts of the body that wasn't turned to chunks, and another to his other side was thrown into a wall and his head smashed inwards like an egg, well, hitting a wall. Those standing behind the exploding fishman were knocked aside, either tumbling down the walkway or off into the expanse below. More of them had a bit of courage and attempted to rush up from further down, while a few hybrids had taken the high ground armed with spearguns and aimed at me.

They had me surrounded. Good, those poor bastards think had the upper hand.

The sound of two whoosh one after another told me when the hybrids fired, one spear clattering uselessly into the wall behind me and the other at the very least logging itself into my chest armor. With about the effectiveness of a thrown piece of butter.

I, on the otherhand, didn't aim at the two amateur-hour ground stompers but at the supports holding up their part of the walkway and unleashed another rocket. The stone crumbled and the boulders fell into the lower parts of the walkway, and fish people went along with it. The ones attempting to assault me were crushed into gore pancakes by the sections of the walkway landing on them while those who tumbled away hit the water with a satisfying smack. Like a fat kid belly flopping off the diving board. The destruction caused the pause in the chanting, and when it returned it lost some of its number.

"You heard that!" I screamed into the pit "Let me give you an encore!" I jumped down the levels and with a short time I was down to their level, with the water up to my waist. I had thought it would be some small ritual chamber, but I found was a vast cavern, large enough it could have fit all of Crescent lagoon base inside of it, a raised platform almost a story tall overlooked by a massive statue of the creature depicted in the symbols I had seen before: a tentacled headed beast, with dragon like wings spread out beyond it's long, scaly arms. And all around it was a horde of abominations, most of them fishmen but some creatures that were completely inhuman were among their ranks, and atop the platform was the spear wielding creature with another roped hybrid, once wear a mask aping the eldrich being they worshiped, leading the ritual. And they were all looking at me.

"Damn it, I got to stop doing that" I said, a horrid sound echoing off the cavern's walls as they mob readied to tear me apart and I reached for my chaingun.