The ocean, a teenager, a colossal beast, a book, and a perpetually gray sky.
It looked like a famous postmodern painting from the Cthulhu Dimension.
After reading for three or four minutes, Morty set the book beside him and rubbed his aching eyes.
The dim light was starting to strain them.
He gave Rick, who was drinking beside him while holding the lantern, an exasperated look.
Then he turned toward Cthylla in the ocean.
Cthylla was one of Cthulhu’s daughters and also a daughter of Idh-yaa.
That made her genuine royalty.
Cthulhu was the most iconic creature in the Cthulhu Mythos, while Idh-yaa was the Queen of Xoth and one of the Great Old Ones.
Her noble blood was one thing, but what truly made her special was something recorded in the book.
Cthulhu had foreseen that he would be destroyed at some point in the future.
Cthylla was the key to his rebirth.
That meant the beautiful Cthylla…
Ugh.
Morty couldn’t force those words out, even if he lied through his teeth.
She looked like a gigantic octopus, had three pairs of eye stalks, barbed tentacles, and expandable hairless wings growing from her back.
Rick, how the hell did you bring yourself to do it?
“You mind your own business,” Rick said.
“I’ve screwed a planet before!
Ever seen planetary Pornhub?
That’s Pornhub on a multiversal scale!”
Then again, if Cthylla carried the secret to Cthulhu’s rebirth, Cthulhu Rick getting her pregnant seemed to explain everything.
That child could not be allowed to live.
Morty suggested aborting it, but Cthulhu immediately shook his head.
That child was the key to his rebirth.
Besides, did Morty seriously think creatures from the Cthulhu Dimension possessed that kind of medical technology?
Getting rid of the child required having an actual way to do it.
Morty had to admit Cthulhu had a point.
But Rick definitely knew how to get inside that hole!
This sort of thing was practically routine for him.
All Rick had to do was crawl inside, and then…
“Fuck off, you little bastard!” Rick snapped.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re imagining!
Absolutely not!
This is your creepy little adventure, not my personal torture show!”
Fine.
Cthulhu refused, and so did Rick.
For the moment, the child inside Cthylla had escaped disaster.
But even if they couldn’t abort it, they still had to examine it.
What if there was a three-hundred-meter-tall Cthulhu-octopus Rick baby growing inside her?
If it inherited even ten percent of Rick’s intelligence, then every Cthulhu creature present would probably be dead sometime in the future.
When Morty explained it that way, Cthulhu’s resolve began to waver.
He hadn’t learned about his daughter’s importance from the book in Morty’s hands.
Instead, he had once dreamed that he might be destroyed in the future.
Could that destruction be connected to Cthulhu Rick?
Cthulhu had only slept for a few decades, yet a monster like that had already emerged in his domain?
He glanced at Rick, whose lifespan was not even a fraction of his own, yet whose combat strength exceeded his several times over.
Cthulhu agreed.
They had to find a way to see exactly what kind of child it was.
Morty and the two Cthulhu beings turned toward Rick.
Rick appeared completely uninterested in the adventure.
He shouted toward the distant wooden cabin, “Hey, octopus face!
I know you’ve already started incubating!
Tell me what gadget you’ve got that can look inside Cthylla’s stomach.
I’m too lazy to build one myself!”
AI Cthulhu Rick was inside the cabin over nine hundred meters away, yet he not only heard Rick but answered loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“You just tried to kill me!
Go fuck yourself!”
“You sure you want Cthulhu himself to come deal with this, you rebellious magical AI?”
“It’s on the left side of the second shelf on the base’s right wall!”
The fact that AI Cthulhu Rick immediately gave in seemed to satisfy Rick.
He looked at Morty, who was still standing there.
“Well?
You going or not?
Are you waiting for him to deliver it, or are you planning to place an errand order?”
“When you led the adventures, I did all your running around,” Morty said.
“Now that I’m leading, you’re just going to play dead?”
“What else would I do?”
Rick refused to move.
Morty cursed him repeatedly in his head, then ran back to retrieve the device himself.
As Morty returned to the cabin, he remembered that he had just tried to get Rick to blow AI Cthulhu Rick to pieces.
There was no way he wasn’t nervous.
But what choice did he have?
Morty forced himself down the stairs, grabbed the device, and immediately climbed back up.
Only after he reached the surface did AI Cthulhu Rick speak leisurely from inside the Incubation Cocoon.
“Kid, the next time you decide to kill someone, make damn sure you can actually finish the job before you try.
Got it?”
“I know.
I only asked Rick to fire that missile because I was pissed about you threatening me with the black mist earlier.”
Morty carried the device back to the shore.
He used the nineteenth-century-style scanner to examine Cthylla’s stomach.
An image appeared in the mirror…
“Fuck!
Jesus!
What the fuck is that?!
Fuck!
Fuck!
Fuck!”
The nauseating, sanity-breaking sight in the mirror made Morty’s stomach churn.
His entire understanding of the world took a vicious beating.
He threw the device aside, crouched beside a rock, and vomited violently.
“You’ve been adventuring with me this long, and that’s all you can handle?” Rick sneered.
“Let me see what’s so…
Jesus!
My eyes!”
“Ugh!
I’m going to kill that Rick!
That sick bastard!
I’m going to fucking kill him!”
Rick had looked at Morty with contempt, but the instant he picked up the scanner and saw the image, his worldview suffered the same brutal blow.
He dropped beside Morty and started vomiting against the rocks.
The three-hundred-meter-tall Cthulhu watched them with curiosity and disdain written across his enormous octopus face.
He leaned closer and looked into the mirror.
Then his colossal body began convulsing uncontrollably, as though he were having a seizure.
If he had possessed a stomach…
In any case, the three males had fallen one after another.
Their reactions made Cthylla, still floating in the water, curious about what could possibly have disgusted them so badly.
She was just about to look at what was growing inside her.
The still-convulsing Cthulhu smashed the scanner with one of his facial tentacles.
Then he plunged beneath the ocean, sending wave after wave rolling toward the shore.
After vomiting up everything he had eaten that day, Morty dropped onto the ground.
His face was deathly pale.
“Rick, I don’t want to stay here anymore…” he said, his voice trembling with tears.
“Let this world be destroyed.
I don’t give a shit about the adventure anymore…”
“Let’s just get the hell out of here!”
Rick had wanted to leave earlier.
But after hearing the tears in his grandson’s voice, he refused.
“No.
We have to deal with this.”
“Once Cthulhu Rick completes his plan, it’ll be too late!”
“This wall is the only thing keeping him contained!”