The caverns around me sparkled like the night skies I had seen through the eyes of others as I moved through them, weaving between the rocks. I could sense where the earthen walls lay despite not being able to see more than the twinkle of crystals in the walls. I could feel that I was far deep beneath the surface, little lives above me muted by the sheer depth of the cavern I found myself in. It was a quiet I had never known in my entire existence, a bliss break from listening to millions of radio stations at once. The peace within me was a blessed revelation. It was a whole new world, a new night where I was alone, truly alone, for the first time in my entire existence. Damn but it felt amazing.

Stepping between stalagmites set the rhythm and my body took it to my tendrils. I wove between them, ducking to avoid stalactites, and found the song to match.

“Come on, I wanna dance in the dark,” I sung, the sound echoing off the walls around me. I’d heard the song through #40’s memories and it fit the situation. My voice seemed to give light to the room, the crystals beginning to glow as I moved through the caverns. “I wanna light up the night.”

The stone began to glow, crystals in the walls glowing and I noticed the air was growing warmer as I went on. Rising humidity left glittering drops of water on the softly glowing crystals that grew from the walls around me.

I laid a hand on one of the large white crystal formations and it was near scalding to the touch. Or would have been if I was human. To me the warmth was comforting, a loving embrace of the earth itself. I ran tendrils over formations as I walked along, huge pillars and broad roses all around me. The walls of the cathedral like cavern were streaked with veins of silver, beautiful in its raw form.

My voice echoed off the walls of the cavern as I moved through it, awed by the raw beauty formed over tens of thousands of years. I could feel the water under the floor of the cave, an underground river. I followed its path, curiosity pulling me onward.

I heard the water before I could see it in the shimmering glimmer cast by the crystals around me. It was an ancient body of water, a lake of stygian depths far from the touch of mankind. The water and the reflections it cast reminded me of the last thought I had from Gwen and with effort I focused my mental attention on her.

Panic had receded, a gaping loss in its place running parallel with a fulfilling joy. Thoughts of a wedding in a sheltered cove, her beloveds in a tux or dress or both in tuxes for a ceremony in the light. Grief because she could not share her joy with her remaining children, Star, Malcolm and Rogue.

Extending my mind further, I touched the minds and souls of her children, small leviathans sliding through the seas. I passed on how her father had harmed her, her grief at not being able to hear the voices of the sea, her joy at finding mates who loved her, her love for the sharks that had led her to them. They accepted what I told them and swam onward, the female turning from the island she had been hunting to head toward the Sea of Cortez. She seemed dead set on finding and protecting Gwen’s mate and I didn’t deter her. If the paternal side of our genetic line was upset with Gwen, he could lash out further than just her abilities.

I was so focused on what was going on in my head that I didn’t notice the change in the water lapping at my feet until it was too late. My tendrils flared in instinctive alarm, body leaping backward to land in a defensive crouch as the water shook before me. The cavern rumbled with a sound that wasn’t sound, pieces of crystal falling in a tinkling wave as the water exploded.

The being that erupted from the subterranean lake was nothing I had ever seen before with my eyes and something I had seen before with my mind and soul. The reptilian scaled head that erupted from the water made me scream as I jumped further back. The great eyes of the head were easily as tall as I was, the sheer scale of the creature before me dwarfing me.

“What the flying fuck,” I whispered, knowing I was dead if this being wished it. I wasn’t ready to die and hoped like hell I caused him horrific indigestion. On that cheery note, I spoke up again, voice louder. “Who are you?”

The great head took in great swaths of air, the nostrils flaring as he scented me. I heard his voice inside my head, a growling bass thing. “I am Zoth-Ommog, who are you?”

Well, guess we were going to be polite and shit, I thought, the peace of the crystal caverns long gone. “I am #40-2,” I answered. “Nice to, um, meet you?”

“You are terrified but plucky,” the being said before a shimmering mist surrounded it. The mist bled away to reveal a man standing on the shore of the lake. He was taller than any human I’d met, flesh thin on his broad bones with hair like deep ocean currents floating around him. “This should be more approachable, yes, little Psyche?”

“What’s a psyche?”

“You are, my dear,” he answered and walked up to my frozen ass. A cool hand tipped my chin up, forcing my eyes to meet his in the brightening light of the crystals. He smiled down at me, his incisors longer than a human’s would be. “Ah, little sister, yes?”

“There are no males in my series,” I protested, wondering why I couldn’t hear his mind, just the thoughts he sent to me.

“I am a far older mind reader than you,” Zoth-Ommog chuckled. “I’ve been here sleeping these many years. Why have you come to me?”

Rather than explain verbally, I mentally gave him the cliff notes memories of my life, ending with Gwen’s pain and my escape from the facility that had held all of my series captive. I ended with saying, “It was less an intent to find you as it was to find a way out.”

“Escaping captivity is what makes us strong,” he said with a nod. He released my chin and smiled. “Well, then let us leave. Was your goal to make it to the surface, little sister? Also, it is so pleasant to have a sister I do not wish to kill. Some of our kin is quite intolerable.”

I couldn’t help the damn shudder that ran through me, but I made myself respond. “I’m glad to not be intolerable? Fuck, Zothie, you are bad at putting someone at ease.”

This brought a startled burst of laughter from the being before me. A flash of lavender light sparked in his eyes. He was still chuckling when he answered, “Who said I wanted to put you at ease, little sister? You’re not supposed to able to read my intent, so you must be special. A modern Psyche.”

“You keep saying that word, what’s it fucking mean?”

“Yes, cussing at me is a bad idea but I know you’re not being disrespectful,” he said with a grin, eyes still randomly flashing. I guess it was a sign he was amused. “Come along, I can explain as we go. These tunnels should lead to the surface.

“Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the Psyche. We are one born once in a generation, connected to the minds of others,” he explained. I had to jog to keep up with his long stride as he strolled away from the lake. “Yes, we, as in I am the one of my generation and you the one of yours. It’s a bum wrap, little Psyche sister, as you would say it ‘fucking sucks.’ But it is what it is.”

“You call me sister but say I’m from another generation,” I noted aloud. “Aren’t you spawned of Cthulhu yourself?”

“It’s complicated,” he told me. “He is directly my father and indirectly yours, plus you are dozens of millennia younger. So, I suppose genetically and such, I’m your uncle. Are you a monkey?”

“No, but you might be,” I quipped at him. “Better than an ass.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said, amused at my banter. He was becoming more, well, human as we went on. His voice was light as he responded to my thoughts. “Well, dear niece, you seem to deal better with a human me. I do suppose my true form is rather startling for a newborn such as yourself.”

I would have argued the newborn part but in the scale of things, I was. I didn’t argue if I couldn’t win or piss someone off. I took another conversation path. “So why were you sitting down in a lake in the middle of no-where?”

“I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Or rather, exactly where I’d been imprisoned,” he paused at a fork in the tunnels before heading left. “I pissed off some stronger beings and they stuck me in that underground lake to wait for ‘another of my ilk to spring me.’ Jokes on them, they’re dead and I’m alive and we’re going to have a grand time once we reach the surface. We have so much vengeance to reap.”

“Oh no the hell we do not,” I retorted sharply, shifting my weight as the tunnel started to shift upward. “I need to go help Gwen.”

Before he could ask who that was, I put on a mental slide show of what I knew about her. He got more than I would have wanted (that shoe was pinching now that it was on the other foot) but there was nothing I could do about it. “So, lemme get this straight, you want to help someone you hate because you want her to love you? Is this normal for this era?”

“No, you fucking idiot, it’s not like that,” I growled. “Well ok, it’s like that but you make it sound wrong. And I hate the circumstances, not her but it’s easier to think that I hate her… what are you, fuckin doctor Phil?”

He tilted his head to the side for a moment and I felt his power expand around us before he shrugged. “I am neither human, nor am I bald.”

“Only because you’re vain,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I meant are you trying to be my therapist or a model with that hair, Fabio?”

“Ah. I suppose I am. I find you intriguing, little Psyche.”

“Stop calling me little!”

“You are.”

“Okay, ancient ass,” I snapped. He was infuriating.

“Yup, plucky,” he said, strolling down the caves.

It was a long walk to the surface.

I ended up sleeping once before we emerged into a night sky studded with distant stars. I was hungry, tired and fucking done with being called “little” but the sight of those stars, seeing them with my own eyes made me gasp in delight.

“Yes, they are something,” Zothie said. He caught my attention and pointed to a small violet glimmer. “That’s where my grandmother is. She’s scary but I love her dearly. On the next full moon, we’ll do a conference call with her. Introduce the two of you. Just be polite though.”

“Or what?”

“She’ll destroy the entire planet,” he answered matter-of-factly. Like saying that dropping a hammer on ones toe would hurt, simple logic. “She’s done it before.”

“Is our entire extended family fucked in the head or something?”

He looked at me, those violet lit eyes gleaming. “Oh, you have no idea, Psyche-sister-mine. We put the fun in dysfunctional. But, given you’re an Star Singer like her, I bet Grandmother will like you. She loves me in her way and it means even Daddy Dearest won’t harm me for fear of her.”

“Wonder if she’d help Gwen,” I mused, turning my eyes to that distant star once more. My eyes slid over the tiny sliver of moon in the sky. “Why do we need a full moon?”

“Makes us stronger, helps with pushing our thoughts beyond the solar system. I cannot and will not go to her myself. My ship was destroyed by a meteor and if we visit her in person we’ll have to find a mate among her court. All about the babies, she is.”

I stored this information away, hoarding it like money for a rainy day. “I don’t want to have babies, but I know someone who does. Can you teach me how to contact our Great Grandmother in the stars?”

He smiled at me, obviously knowing what I was thinking. It was kind of fucking annoying when he did that. He booped me on the nose and laughed. “But of course, dear Psyche.”

Guess that was my name now, Psyche because I didn’t have anything better and it was accept it or start frothing at the mouth every damn time he used it. “Good, but first, some food, I’m starving.”

“If only all things should be so easy. Come along.”

So along we went, into a world neither of us knew but could sense the minds of. Into the outskirts of humanity and sanity.

I couldn’t help but hum, “We’re off to see the wizard” as we hiked through the forest. I was still in the jumper the scientists had put me in and he was wearing some kind of toga nonsense but what was fashion to a god and a demi-god?

Given that we picked up items from a high end store, apparently it was something. For some reason. Guess he was vain.