Work Text:
Dancers, revelers, and worshipers danced until their feet were torn to ribbons and shredded flesh and muscles bared to all eyes. Strips of sacrificed flesh left abandoned. Fresh coppery blood scent thick in the air, leaving the oppressing feeling of mania almost an afterthought. Merely, another taste in the air. A thick sweetness, cloying and gelationus in the throat, taking over the senses.
Mania. Hysteria. Madness.
Blood on the tongue.
The music speeds up, wind instruments shrieking, notes rising into a discordant wail. Every stamp of feet leaves behind more blood and gore the wails driving the distant madness closer and closer until all present could taste blood.
Well. Those with enough tongue left to taste.
Hastur sat upon an imposing throne, enjoying the scene as dancers moved faster. Faster, until long limbs whipped and tore into the next closest worshiper, the dance devolving into pure ecstasy and madness.
A thump, completely out of place, earned a few seconds of Hastur’s attention as the god glanced over. A bundle of pages lay amidst the blood and gore, several loose and already soaking up the blood.
Raising one hand, Hastur watched as two dancers, faceless and bloody, scooped up the pages bringing them closer. His words were not needed here.
The closer dancer, face covered in open sores and hollow spaces where eyes once existed, had pages pressed to its breast. Head falling painfully backward, throat bared, body convulsing in pleasure as it fell within Hastur’s shadow.
Watching absently, several eyes on the still-moving dancers, Hastur waved a hand allowing his dancer to move closer.
Captured pages were spread out, sticking to bloody wounds, but the dancers Hastur commanded froze in place. Allowing their master a chance to read at his leisure.
It was music. Pages upon pages, filled with long looping notes of music. Some pages perfect- notes sharp and vicious to the eyes. Many more with sections scratched through or written over. Whirling fingerprints in charcoal where the composer paused too long. Ripples and roughness where tears fell in despair. Brown stains where fingers practiced and traced the notes until they bled.
“We’ve received more music,” Hastur murmured. Ignoring the worshipers beginning to wail and rip at their skin from the overwhelming joy of his voice. “There’s a softness to this, a poignant sweetness, shall we sing this next?”
Hastur snapped- wondering what was behind the snap drove more of his worshipers beyond madness. Still more shuddered, bodies spasming as eyes rolled and roiled until gooey chunks of meat fell in a mix of tears and gore.
The second cultist, with fewer pages, pressed close. It’s body shuddering and on the brink of collapse as it offered up the last few. Features melted away into obscurity as Hastur bestowed his full attention on the creature.
Absently, Hastur vaguely recalled this was one of his better worshipers. The heavy hood, with its depthless dark, switched to focus on the new pages. Just as absently enjoying as the worshiper's face melted away, lost and forgotten until it earned its’ face back. Which… was perhaps soon in the making.
Around him, the room shuddered. The very floor split apart as the roof was ripped open. In the void above, two dark suns bathed the occupants in bright darkness. Hastur cocked his head, appreciating the twisted and distant malevolence the light brought, the cold darkness that drifted over his bright and tattered form.
Anticipation is thick in the air. Heady and overwhelming as it pressed closer.
Drip.
Music vanished, yanked away. Dancers froze in place, none daring to look up and see what was coming through the rift in the ceiling.
Drop.
Scarf-covered limbs twitched and spasmed, the fabric turning dull and bland. Bodies beneath the silk, now frozen in place, waiting for orders from their King.
Drip.
Slow and deliberate, Hastur leaned back, eyeing the dark rift water leaked through. The opening was dark, dark in a way he did not like, and water had never been to his taste. There were others in the Dreamlands that favored water. They were welcome to it.
Splash.
A form, wet and naked, fell from the rift. Water splashing everywhere.
A child. Small, wet, and naked.
The manic energy of the room froze as all shifted to view the oddity, 0.
Pure luck, or perhaps an unseen hand at work, allowed the tiny form to land on a large cushion before the throne. It was the cushion meant for- well… not small random sacrifices in the form of children.
It began to sob.
A sound unlike any Hastur had heard before. High-pitched, desperate, hands pressed around its face for protection as the sobs grew and strengthened.
Lower, in the pit, the dancers reared backward, hands to their heads and frozen in place until Hastur relented and ordered their movements.
The few left with working vision watched in horror as tentacles rose from beneath Hastur’s robe. Layers of fabric, from the dearly expensive dreamweaver silk from Kadath to a coarse fabric even moonbeasts would avoid, parted and pulled tightly as movement stirred beneath.
“Well.” Hastur leaned forward, eyes flashing in the darkness of his hood. “Did our mystery worshiper send us more than music?”
One of his oldest Dancers was first to race forward, anticipating his orders before they needed to be spoken. Notes trilled from its mouth as it raced forth on bladed feet dropping much of its own clothing upon the wailing child.
His own symbol gleamed. Pulling in all viewers with working eyes.
“Or perhaps they sent us a sacrifice?” Hastur sighed, deeply. He was one of the better gods to walk the dreamlands. His people wished for little, they were well amused and cared for, wanting little. “Are you a sacrifice?”
The still sobbing child; and Hastur could admit it was most likely a human child, shuddered beneath sections of fabric.”
“‘M Faroe. Where’s my daddy?!”
“Faroe.” The movement of Hastur standing and looming was lost on the child. His people knew to cower. “Welcome to Carcosa.”