The thundering sound of gunfire echoed throughout the courtyard, as the forces of man and monster clashed upon each other like boiling oil meeting ice-cold water.
Meanwhile, deep down under the castle lies a semi-circular grove whose every corner and edge is filled to the brim with alien flora from beyond the stars that come in countless types and appear in uncountable eldritch shapes.
On the ground used to plant them lie thousands upon thousands of human corpses from a variety of sources such as victims of the plague, commoners kidnapped by the nobility, or even piles of servants from the castle itself who had been murdered only an hour ago to summon an army of 'Starspawn' to fight off the attacking force.
In the middle of the grove lies a ginormous, rotten great blackwood whose branches rise up high like a monarch's crown, its roots penetrate the stone floor like tendrils of steel. Beside it is a sacrificial altar made from pure blackstone tainted with blood, on it lies the body of a young blonde-haired girl in a pure white dress who is still fast asleep from being drugged, her lips tainted by blueberry pie that was used to drug her.
"We must hurry up, it seems like even the 'Younglings' we summoned couldn't hold them off." one baron wearing a cultist robe and mask spoke to Marquis Scrofa le Massif, who was standing beside him, Kris dagger in hand.
The Marquis stared at his slumbering daughter with a complex expression hidden behind the mask.
The final ritual demands the sacrifice of those he loved to wake the 'Matriarch' whose body had crashed down onto the planet uncountable aeons ago. It was an entity of higher existence introduced to him by His Highness, Prince Gardner himself.
Since he knew of its existence, it had started to whisper to him and everyone else standing here in the grove their deepest, darkest desires using its sweet, motherly, lady-like voice, telling them that it could provide them with power beyond that of mortality to fulfill those desires, to become its little tree branches and spread its name throughout the land and the world at large.
'Shrub Niggurath, Black Matriarch of the Grove with a Thousand Young'
In its name, they spread the pox-plague using the blanket method provided to them by the entity, they kidnapped and killed in its name, they siphoned out every bit of wealth and funds they could muster and offered them to the entity, leaving their people to face poverty and monsters without help, and now, to finish the ritual, the lives of those the leader loved must be sacrificed to wake the slumbering, yet still dreaming great eldritch entity.
The Marquis swallowed the saliva down his throat as he raised his dagger high above his daughter's body while whispering an incantation in a language as old as time itself.
"O fhalma ot n'ghftog gre, c' goka, ymg' gof'nn, ymg' r'luh, ng c' mghri f' n'gha. O fhalma, Y' vulgtmor, lw'nafh llll ymg."
Translation: O mother of the black grove, grant us, your children, your power, and our enemies their death. O mother, I sacrifice this life for you.
But just as he was about to plunge the dagger down onto his daughter's chest, her eyes suddenly opened, revealing pale eyes with milky grey pupils.
"Papa?" the girl asked in confusion about why she was here, since the last thing she could remember was enjoying her pie inside her room alongside her fluffy dolls companion.
Yet she couldn't even foresee the Kris that would seals her own fate, as she had been blind since birth, a birth which took the life of her mother away, the life he wanted to resurrect by committing the ritual.
In that moment, his heart ached, and his hand came to an abrupt stop in midair.
His subordinates in the grove stared at him in confusion, their faces behind the masks perplexed as if asking him, "What's wrong?"
The Marquis slowly turned his head toward his subordinates, then uttered an incantation that had not been provided to him by the prince nor the entity, but one he thought of in this exact spot and time.
"Mggoka ya ng ya uh'e, spare ya fhalgof'n, o fhalma ahlloigehye hl' h."
Translation: Take me and my people, spare my daughter. O mother, please heal her.
He spoke in a sobbing tone, as if he were crying inside his own mask from unbearable sadness.
"I'm sorry, 'Slyph', my dear daughter, I love you..." he whispered with a sudden new-found determination that sprang from deep within his heart, as he used the Kris in his hand to cut open his own fat ridden throat, spew out the torrent of crimson blood, as his body fell down to his dead.
In theory, for those he loved could also include himself, sparing his daughter her fate amid the shock of his followers and subordinates.
Even if it would result in the ritual ending in failure, his daughter would survive and be healed.
In that split second of confusion, his subordinate, their bodies began to twist like tree branches cracking through a whirlwind of pure agony, their skin blackened like charred deadwood, their half-silent screams shouted from their melting mouths as their voices warped like dried plants. Their appendages and organs changed and churned into a parody of human form that resembled more a black-barked tree merged with limbs that looked like the twisted remains of rotten octopus and devilish black goats.
After they were bestowed the gift of the 'Black Matriarch's Blessing', their twisted bodies marched like a herd of goats shepherded by the presence of the still fast-asleep great tree into the surface to fight off those who came to defile the grove with their so-called 'Technology'.