Chapter 40

Like little children left alone in the woods and having called our mom to pick us up we had to merely sit in the eerily dark and foggy black forest.

Galatea as much as she wanted to fly off and say fuck the creepy atmosphere knew better than to chance getting impaled on some vampire's magical dagger or even bit by some other monster.

But Transylvania's nature of a land of monsters couldn't be denied and within ten minutes of waiting around we heard a howling wind pass through the tree, we were sitting within its branches to get off the ground.

"Ah hell nah..." Galatea silently cursed as what looked to be cultists wearing completely covering clothes and having those balls on chains that smoke, heavy swinging with each motion of their arms began to walk through our area humming some fell chant that made my eyes fog up, my ears felt like I was underwater, and even more distressing was how I could feel drops of blood leaking from my nose.

I realized this wasn't some little satanic cult summoning some demon of hell that could be ripped apart or even banished to Hell. This was one of those super extreme cults that had a connection with either the endless gods, demons and other beings encased into the Source Wall that kept the Outer Gods from munching on this universe, or the very Outer Gods that wanted to munch on said universe.

The DC universe didn't have the Infinity Stones that automatically protected the universe it was in by blasting whatever foreigner with those energies like the Marvel Universe did. Nope here in the DC Universe, they built a cosmic wall that would absorb people and use them and their abilities to repel others. Hell, it supposedly even had a Dr. Doom stuck in it.

"Jake, do we smash them?" Galatea whispered and I shook my head grabbing Galatea's arm to keep her stable and on the large branch we were sitting on.

"No. Let them pass, we don't want to face whatever they are praying towards." I said holding Galatea firmly against me as I didn't enjoy the thought of some eldritch god feeling us slaughter their cultists.

But seemingly as though answering my very thoughts of not wanting to get involved what looked like a series of far more agile bipedal bears came tearing through the foggy forests and with a series of chest vibrating roars they leapt into the cultists and began to tear them apart.

But just as I was worried, the cultists were definitely not normal as their blood was a luminescent blue and stank of rotting fish and the sea, and from the puddles of gore, the werewolves left behind tentacles and other monstrous things exploded outwards as though the glowing blue blood was a portal to the Far Realms.

"Yeah... Wonder Woman can find us in a bit." I muttered as I grabbed Galatea and began to slowly and more importantly quietly fly away as the head cultist's body had telephone pole-sized massive tentacles growing out its voluminous robes and were literally tearing apart the werewolves.

"Fucking Icthultu is a thing in this god-forsaken, fucking universe." I almost screamed as I recalled how Icthultu was literally Cthulhu and of course, Galatea's Kryptonian heritage made her easy mind control fucking bait, so I quickly ripped off the anti-magic mind control ring I got from Snout's burrow on my finger and pushed it onto her, and had to groan as I felt the fell chants coming from the eviscerated cultist's grown from a low mutter from across a hallway to a sonorous chant of choir slam into my mind.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn / Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn / Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn / Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" The head cultist chanted even as I felt blood seeping out of my ears and the roar of heavy waves seemingly smashing into me with each word I could feel down inside my very soul the true words he was speaking beyond this dimension.

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming . . . That's not dead . . . which can eternally lie, and with strange eons, even death may die!" The androgynous waterlogged drowned voice spoke through my ears but feeling myself being seemingly pulled into a 'dream' I violently shook my head.

"The Endless Desert has never seen the swell of the sea! Come, Hueco Mundo!" I roared over the sound of the battle and for a brief moment the very world's supernatural stillness shattered as an Outer God's eyes locked onto a Realty Marble coming into being and like a massive beach ball being quickly inflated, the presence of my Reality Marble blocked and blocked the Outer God's eldritch power from being pushed into his acolyte.

I vomited blood from the stress of bringing out my reality marble as just as I made the allusion to my reality marble being but a beach ball, it was just as stable and resistant as one and I was funneling the vast majority of my power to keep the deluge of many, hands eyes, blades, and infinite other 'curious' beings from ruining my reality marble.

"Jake! What's wrong? Where the fuck are we?!" Galatea demanded as she held me up while the head eldritch acolyte finished off the last werewolf with its massive tentacles.

"Tea... You need to kill that man. He will kill or drive us mad otherwise and I can't fight with holding up my inner world where we are now." I whispered as I felt something smash into the side of my reality marble and I could tell from the energy signature of rotting seawater that it was Icthultu attempting to assert its connection back with its priest.

Galatea only hesitated for a moment but seeing the blood dripping down my mouth and other facial holes she nodded and then a wet splattering noise rang out as Galatea used her full Kryptonian strength with zero holding back to clothesline and decapitated the priest and even as she smashed into the soft white sands of my inner world. A devote cultist was nothing to sneeze at.

In that infinitely brief moment where the cultists head broke off tentacles sprouted from both the head and the remains of the neck stump, and the tentacles reattached and drew the head back as Galatea snarled in slow motion as she got herself back into position to seemingly throw a brutal haymaker into the priest but said priest actually met Galatea's fist with its bare hands and didn't move back an inch.

"Galatea of Rao, join my lord in the infinite dreams and gain immortality!" The priest gurgled but Galatea was having none of it as I finally couldn't keep up my flight and collapsed into the sand beneath me.

"Just die dammit!" Galatea roared as she used her heat vision to light up the pitch darkness under the priest's hood making it screech and recoil and, in that moment, when whatever magic, it used to negate her super strength ended Galatea roared as she punched forward and with another nasty noise, she pierced the priest's chest with her hand and then ripped out its malformed heart while still blasting it with her heat vision and finally with a mind rending death scream the cloaked figure burst into dark green smoke and I felt Icthultu's touch leaving my reality marble as its connection to this layer of reality leave its grasp like Klarion being banished when I killed Tinkle.

As I dropped my reality marble, I felt my face cushion change from gritty sand to rotting leaves... Honestly, I couldn't tell which one was worse, and then to make me feel even worse was the rapid thudding that could only be a woman impatiently waiting for you and as I rolled over from my face-down position I saw Wonder Woman, my mentor staring at me and Galatea who had collapsed beside me.

"You've been gone for fifteen minutes... What the hell did you do." Diana groaned as she saw how battered we were.

"Robbed a haunted castle, fought a Fomorian, exercised the spirit of one of Dracula or Vlad the Impaler's descendants, and then when we came back to Earth, we witnessed an Outer God's servants get ripped apart by a pack of werewolves and then said Outer God decided to possess his head servant and tear apart the werewolf pack and then me and Galatea fought said outer god in my personal inner world," I said with all honesty as Diana's face went through a whole array of emotions before she huffed and grabbed me and Galatea by our collars.

"You are both grounded... Jake no pizza for you and Galatea, no five-gallon buckets of ice cream for a week." Diana ordered as she carried us by our collars as she flew off with our exhausted forms.