By Joseph Plattner

C’tan By Joseph Plattner

My doctor thought it prudent of me to write this account while I still have presence of mind to do so. After having a bevy of medicines pumped through my veins, I’m finally cognizant enough to record these events before I again descend into that wretched state where my sane tongue dare not speak. These noxious words are the fruit of his indefatigable efforts. I will say at the outset that I make this record through great reservations, for I am convinced that the simian curiosity of the eventual reader will lead them to ape the same footsteps that have consigned me behind these cotton-lined walls.

That fateful October day began with a rather weak but insistent rap at the door. Having not been expecting company and being in no temper for some salesman’s unctuous solicitation, I made my way to the door with a kind of irascible slowness. When I opened the door, I saw not the slick smile of a solicitor, but two grave men in austere suits. The one—Andreas Bardowin if I am to believe his greeting —was Lilliputian to a comical degree. It was as if someone had affixed an old, Italian’s face to a ailing child’s body.

By contrast, the taciturn albino accompanying him seemed utterly colossal by comparison. He stared down at me from behind a pair of dark-colored glasses—no doubt to protect the world from his pink, frightful eyes. The albino’s meaty hand clutching mine only served to punctuate his otherworldly impression. He hovered about Mr. Bardowin in the manner of a bodyguard, yet Bardowin’s obsequiousness demeanor towards him left me with a different sort of impression entirely. Mr. Bardowin introduced Mr. Teague, a man who seemed unwilling or unable to find is tongue, before declaring: ‘Clarence Drommer.’

‘I am,’ I admitted curtly, having failed noticed that Bardowin had used my name more as a declaration than a proper question. Mr. Bardowin invited himself in with a passive insistence. Though I had expected to have a day of relative peace to catch up on some personal business—not the least of which was discovering the purpose of the two-thousand dollar check that had been mysteriously deposited into my account some weeks prior—I found that I no longer possessed the gall to refuse them.

They made their way to my office and sat down. Each of my half-hearted attempts to be a gracious host were met with a polite but dismissive wave by Mr. Bardowin, who informed me in no uncertain terms that they were here for business and business alone. The toad-like Teague only nodded from behind his glasses.

‘We trust you’ve enjoyed the check?’ Mr. Bardowin asked, referencing the mysterious funds. Perhaps sensing my displeasure, he was quick to set my mind at ease. ‘Do not trouble yourself about it; it comes as a gratuity to demonstrate the seriousness of our intentions.’ Teague smiled in an altogether disconcerting show of agreement. ‘You are free to refuse our offer, and may retain the funds as payment for our incursion.’ To say this both vexed and intrigued me would be an understatement, but I held my tongue and waited as Teague produced a weather-worn stack of papers from his attaché case. ‘We wish to make use of your exemplary abilities to see to a translation,’ Mr. Bardowin said without a hint of sycophancy. ‘We’ve heard about your impeccable work with DiBrieer, and wish for you to take a look at our manuscript.’

‘Why me?’ I asked, astonished that they would know about the work I had done with a small German mining outfit some decades prior. ‘What about Terrance Digby or Donovan’s group? Surely they come more highly recommended than I.’

‘Both dead I’m afraid,’ Mr. Bardowin stated with some irritation. ‘Besides, there are very few scriveners out there with the three qualities we seek most in a translator. Your natural use of Deutsch language and geological training ranks you very high upon our list of qualified candidates.’

‘What of the third quality?’ I asked, not willing to let that particular omission slip by.

‘This job,’ Mr. Bardowin began cautiously, ‘requires a degree of mental fortitude uncommon among men. Not only will you be under rather unique constraints, but we also require that the translated knowledge stay with you alone, no matter the effect they may have upon your person.’

Having translated the trade secrets of dozens of various companies, the latter request did not strike me the least bit anomalous. The former, however, did not sit well with me, but they met my inquiries into this matter with polite obfuscations, as well as the occasional promise that all would be clear enough when and if I accepted the project.

I then asked to look at the manuscript. Though it may be replete with privileged information, such a request was to be expected. How else would I be able to assess the difficulties involved with the project, my ability to handle such an undertaking, and the timeframe required to complete it? But Mr. Bardowin assured me that not a page would flitter through my fingers until they had assurance of my seeing it through to its completion. Looking to the unruly manuscript, and judging from its age and the copious amount of hand-written additions I witnessed from when he first produced it, I set out terms that I believed would be extravagant under ordinary circumstances. Their ludicrous need for privacy, their abrupt appearance and the calloused indifference they showed in giving me news of the death of a former colleague all afforded me the levity to treat them in a manner of formal contempt. Much to my surprise they not only agreed, but did not deduct the initial two thousand dollar offering from the final amount.

I had the contract brought up the following evening, and they returned to sign it without even bothering to glance over the terms. As they produced the manuscript, they leafed through it and pulled out a small fraction of the whole. ‘This is to be your portion.’

‘ My portion?’ I exclaimed. ‘My terms were set by my estimations regarding the manuscript proper.’

‘The whole of the work is not your concern,’ he assured me. ‘How am I expected to contribute to such an endeavor without the contextual necessities found in the bedrock of context found in the initial pages?’ I asked without a little exasperation.

Mr. Bardowin shook his head derisively. ‘We trust in your abilities. Any word or passage you deem too difficult will be left in its original form. We will see to smoothing out any discrepancies upon its completion.’

This new wrinkle troubled me, but the terms of the contract did give me ample time and resources for any background investigation that I may find necessary, so I acquiesced to their peculiar terms. Not only did they pay the full amount discussed in advance, they left me with a pre-paid parcel in which to return the original manuscript to them along with my translation. Perplexed beyond measure, I’m sad to say I accepted this without protest, for it seemed a small matter by way of comparison.

Having taken care of my personal business the day prior, I retired to my office and began leafing through the material to get a general idea of the task before me. What I found upon my cursory readings defied all common logic. These were not the secrets of a long-shuttered German mining outfit from which they hoped to glean the whereabouts of some long-lost mineral vain, but a slew of esoteric nonsense for which I had no basis of comparison whatsoever. No doubt much of my confusion lie with the portions of the manuscript to which I was not privy, but I could not for the life of me imagine how some of the realities assumed within those pages could be spoken of so casually. They flaunted even the most basic of civilized knowledge with the calm disposition of the learned few.

The author spoke with the reverent detachment about a myth structure before which I was wholly ignorant, speaking of realms and distant deities that exist outside the paltry limits of the human intellect. The writer spoke of hideous things with various titles: the snake-like Yig, the abominable Yog-Shothoth, the ever-fertile Shub Niggurath, the obscure Ithaqua, and Hastur who, through very meticulous grammar construction, seemed to be an anthropomorphic manifestation in yellow, a horrid floating monstrosity whose name we dare not speak, and a city in the Hyades comprised of the ruins of innumerable bygone eras. (This last bit gave me no small headache, for this Hastur creature appeared to be one and the same with the others, and yet all three at once.) Whenever the names of these despicable things came to the writer’s pen, a kind of vague-yet-elastic veneration overtook his use of descriptors, as if pedestrian, material forms were of fleeting interest.

Of all these, there were two of particular note: Cthulhu, a being spoken of with the disdain a gnat might show an ox that has trodden upon its nest, and another whose existence I could only discern from the superlatives surrounding its mention.

If these were the mad ravings of some erudite imbecile, it would not have had such a profound effect upon my person. I had heard of such manuscripts before—how one could live in New England as long as I have and claim to be ignorant of such rumored texts was anyone’s guess. Such references had long since gone through their cycles, spoken of first in hushed whispers, then idle curiosity, then open scorn, until finally being regarded as a sad joke.

But the words flowing through my pen were not some fantastical recorded dream after a night of opiate excess, but the meticulous, painstaking work of one who understand that they were communicating something altogether more significant than themselves. The internal consistency of the claims, while both wild and initially dubious, were so convincing in their wholeness as to point to something much more frightening than one author’s burgeoning lunacy. With the deference and consistency of the peculiar history that it recounted, as well as the matter of its reverential tone, I quickly concluded that I was not merely transcribing some trifling bit of esoteric knowledge, but the unearthed scriptures of an unknown sect.

What’s more, I could discern the passive assumptions of a degree of geologic knowledge within these pages. My section of the manuscript was replete with references to mineral ores and indigenous rock formations, but all that was secondary to the author’s singular focus. What I found within these pages completely undermined my assumptions about our supposed scientific achievement by way of cosmology in the last few years, not with prophetic vagaries, but with concrete concepts just now gracing the lips of modern science.

What I am about to share is not without some controversy. The science of it is so new as to require its tedious echoing in the pages of collegiate texts before they are accepted by the gatekeepers of academia. As the reader may be aware, all fresh concepts must be massaged into the prevailing intellectual zeitgeist before the accredited yokels will deem them worthy of consideration.

In the beginning of the beginning, when time, space and matter were yet to be, there was a terrible void. To imagine what this must have looked like would be futile, for there was neither light to see it with, nor matter in which to see, nor even spatial dimensions to inhabit. Then, at the very first instance the rational mind could call a moment, there was an immense expansion, creating time, space and all the material with which to measure it. The particulars of this creative enterprise are of an immense meticulousness: too little matter and it would all scatter so completely as to prohibit the formation of celestial bodies; too much and the combined gravitational forces would cause the whole to come collapsing back in on itself. But the precision, the incomprehensible exactitude, of the variables afforded the opportunity for matter to coalesce within the ripples of space-time, forming the planet from beneath our feet and the stars of the cosmos.

What was peculiar about the whole thing was how the author not only possessed this knowledge that is only now on the cusp of modern scientific awareness, but had so thoroughly expounded upon it some four centuries earlier. They of course didn’t speak of this with the same modern locutions we use when discussing our specialties, but in their scriptural overview of geologic concepts, buried within the casual nomenclature about the earth’s depths, the author painstakingly sketched a rather uncannily accurate portrayal of our understanding of cosmology within their myth structure. How could this bit of knowledge have come to them if not from some revelation from a higher source? The fact that they incorporated it seamlessly in their descriptions of their cosmic deities only served to heighten my unease.

What’s more, I could not discern at the time as to how these concepts married together from the purposely truncated the body of work within my care. Even with my abridged manuscript, it was evident that before our universe had even begun to take discernable shape, there was life at the seams, beings whose very existence was an abomination to our finite, material minds. Some of these unfathomable entities warred with one another, at times dipping into our humble universe for their own inscrutable purposes, occasionally banishing one another here for uncounted eons, or perhaps coming here to rest from their dreadful and inexplicable labors. How an otherwise rational mind could conceive of such fanciful extravagances was beyond my abilities to imagine. II.

I tried to put these matters out of my mind for the evening, but my thoughts invariably returned to Bardowin’s resolve to find an interpreter with a stalwart mental fortitude. These suspicions, along with the new and inexplicable concepts from the manuscript, caused me to experience dreams the likes of which I had never before encountered. It was as if an unconscious reflex wrestled against those formless realms that had heretofore gone beneath my suspicion. I awoke in a cold sweat more than once at the sheer, incalculable indifference of it all. I could have easily dismissed the author’s claims if the little assumptions weren’t so real, weren’t so damned true. What was I to make of these tales of horror and woe that a secret class of men held with such conviction, imbibed with them yet impervious to their implications? I was quickly becoming split between two worlds, one foot in each, wavering with each new revelation.

Sleep having eluded me, I set out at once for distant Arkham, the home of my alma mater, Miskatonic University—the one place I believed I could find answers that could give rest to my troubled soul.

Upon my arrival at the library, I found the same peculiar sorts that I had remembered, including the mole-like Dr. Raekle who appeared as if he had not aged a day. When I explained my predicament— taking care to omit some of the more delicate particulars—he told me he thought it fortunate that they had only entrusted to me a small fraction of the whole, for there were others who had come to him after just such an undertaking and had been led to suicide. When I pressed him about those poor, unfortunate souls, he confided in me that they had been none other than Terrance Digby and Horace Donovan.

Dr. Raekle led me to the back where a number of dusty tomes sat heavily upon various desks, each lit unevenly by lamps reflected in the lenses used to read the half-garbled marginal notes written within them. He opened a leather-bound copy of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten and deftly turned to a particular passage. ‘I believe you will find some clarity in here,’ he instructed. ‘But I believe any insights you glean will only increase your recent cognitive dissonance.’ I waved off his warning and allowed him to return to other matters.

As I made my way through the antiseptic German, I found echoed many of the same inscrutable names and concepts mentioned in brief in my translation. The tone, however, was different, for I gathered this did not purport to be scripture. But the hairs on my neck bristled as I began to understand—if not fully comprehend—the grave and immutable realities that exist beyond the eyes of man. The tome did not mention the manuscript by name, but made passing inferences its servants, and an unimaginably immense existence beneath our feet, using a few choice phrases familiar to me in my studies of what I have been increasingly calling ‘my’ manuscript—as if such a work can ever be owned like some trifling bus schedule.

I could not finish the entirety of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten itself, but one page in particular proved to have a curious indention, the same sort one might find after pressing upon a book and jotting down a note. In clear English script, I was able to discern the curious title C’tan, as well as both an address and a future date. Though the thought of making myself privy to some secretive undertaking did not leave me without a keen sense of hesitation, I found myself drawn to the possibility of finding the sort of men who would take the claims of these manuscripts seriously. It was perhaps the only way I could once again see by the light of the sun without the niggling doubts of that which I had uncovered thus far. I wrote down the address and made plans to visit the locale near that date.

Having a good two weeks or more before the mysterious engagement, I went through my manuscript time and again both for translation and illumination. When the work was at its most perfect, I mailed it to the inscrutable Mr. Bardowin, but not before penning a copy of my own.

Those two weeks were the most restless of any of my years. Nightmares and cold sweats became my nightly companions. I could not be sure, but it was as if my body was fighting off a rather nasty cognitive infection. This only furthered my insistence upon visiting that locale to discover how such a manuscript came to be, and on the distant hope that I could gather more insight of how such ancient men could have come by such advanced knowledge.

As the date drew near, I excused myself from other business and made my way to the small hamlet off the coast of Massachusetts. The address proved to be a mostly vacant lot overlooking a shallow sea cliff. I discovered the remnants of the foundation of what once had been a humble domicile, but a thick, impenetrable concrete blocked all entrances to the cellar. I did my best not to be seen as I scoured the stony shores below, the wooden glen above, and the rocky cliff face in between. For all the evidence, this foul place held no significance whatsoever. My heart sank with the setting sun. There was simply nothing for me to find: no cellars nor caves nor niches of any sort.

But as I sat next to a bush to pray to whatever vestiges of civilized religion still clung to my soul, I heard a retinue make their way to the cliff-face.

Though it may not seem like the most rational course of action, I crouched and waited for them to pass, my living soul a testament to the dumb luck that possessed me to do so. Sixteen robed figures passed me in quick succession as they made their way down to the rocks below. Apart from their peculiar dress, they gave no visual cues of anything amiss, but as they passed my location, I felt a distinct wrongness about their presence, as if some ethereal complement oozed from beneath their robes or from the pages of the tentacle-fronted tomes they carried. As I gathered my wits about me and peered over the cliff, they walked down the steep embankment to the rocks jutting from the sea, gathering in an unholy configuration as they began to speak in some gurgling, animalistic tongue.

Whatever briny horrors were about to erupt from the sea I would never know, for as soon as the lead figure opened his tome and the seas began to froth with foul vapors, one of the hooded figures burst from the formation and produced a Luger before shooting him square in the chest. As the high priest—if one can call him such—looked down at his mortal flesh in disbelief, the others turned upon the renegade and shouted ‘Rl’yeh Nacht Nagl Cthulhu. Cy Shrrth’n C’tan Nagl Fhtagn Nyrrl Tsarrn,’ the last of which they repeated with an awful emphasis. These words embedded themselves in my sleep-deprived faculties with a terrible exactness as the scene played out before me. And of course there were the names, Cthulhu and C’tan, names now so deeply enmeshed in my consciousness as to startle me upon hearing them spoken with human lips.

I was wholly ignorant of the inner workings of such internecine disputes, but knew enough about human endeavors to know that such a feat would not have been trusted to a single agent. My eyes fell to the now lone figure that had not bothered to move from his rocky perch. As the others continued in their debasing of the traitors human body in their midst, the other calmly removed his robe to reveal that he was hardly a man at all, but a loose confederation of pallid skin stretched inadequately around an exaggerated human musculature that was clearly visible between the fleshy strands. Though his eyes were red with ill health, his face was unmistakably familiar—Teague, the same albino I had shaken hands with some weeks prior.

He began to chant what appeared to be a silent and pleasurable supplication, but was interrupted as his head and upper spine jerked sideways upon his body, allowing a segmented appendage to erupt from the shoulder cavity they left behind. It was not until this deformed, centipede-like intrusion was bearing down on them did any of the others become privy to their mortal danger.

I’m ashamed to admit that I lost my nerve and slunk back into the shallow ditch until silence once again descended upon the scene. I could feel warm reverberations drift through the air as light tickled the edges of my vision, but no amount of the strange and terrible sensations were able to quicken me from the safety of my position. I had never before felt so utterly helpless as I was that night, caught on the periphery of things I could not hope to understand. What other horrors manifest on that doleful beach I can only imagine, but after an hour or more of ear-blistering silence I again peered over the precipice and found no more evidence of the group than when I had first arrived. The briny waves undulated ominously as if to offer a suggestion as to their fate.

As I started to leave, a glimmer caught my eye. It was a lucky happenstance of starlight, for its location did not afford view from any other angle, and surely the coming tide would have claimed it for its own had I not intervened. Upon further investigation of the rocks below, I found a brass medallion picturing a curled grub worm encircled with earthen textures. This seemed unlike the tentacle symbolism I associated with the larger group, so I deduced it must have come from one of the conspirators. Though its presence made me increasingly uneasy, I took it with me in hopes of further elucidation.

At this point, any sane man would have abandoned his lust for knowledge lest it consume him. I knew this intuitively, yet my dreams continued to writhe and squirm from under the weight of each new revelation. The dreams were vivid, desultory and sharp, pitting me against diverse, unrelated phantasmagoria as my consciousness fought off the cascading hollow once occupied by my certainties. Not a few times did I spring awake, both panicked and delirious, barely able to gather my wits about me until I stumbled upon grub worm medallion. As strange as it may seem, this frightful trinket appeared to stem the tide of these nocturnal incursions. In this way, I discovered that the medallion somehow possessed a property able to quell dreams altogether, rendering my unconscious mind no more active than that of a stone.

I searched for things pertaining to both the medallion and the segmented horror that had erupted from Teague, but my efforts were slow and cautious lest anyone loyal to that frightful troop became privy to my investigations. By curious happenstance, I discovered a mention of the same grub worm iconography in a map of an ancient cave system while doing some geological transcription for a New England mining outfit. Its description was crude at best, leaving me to believe it was a small, trifling curiosity to the excavators of precious ores rather than the hushed reverence of those adhering to the awe- inspiring C’tan, the storied Cthulhu, or any of the other wondrous and troubling entities found within my manuscript.

I made my way to the cave system under the auspices of gathering information for my technical writing. What I found upon my arrival was that those who had been working in the caves were somewhat reluctant to offer me a tour due to some unexplained disappearances. This I took as a mixed blessing, for if this underground system had no otherworldly significance I would have found everything about it to be rather pedestrian. But they eventually relented, taking great liberties with my patience by going over the safety program ad nauseam, possibly in the hopes that my interest would succumb to the bureaucratic weight. But withstand them I did, for so whole was my obsession that I could think of nothing else.

As we descended into the mineshaft, I made a point to question them about the recent disappearances, but their verbal omissions revealed much more than their lips. Not a few times did their helmet lights temporarily blind me during our decent, seemingly at fixed intervals. I took special note of those areas and planned to visit them myself, even if I’d have to take on the role of a night prowler to do so.

Fate had other plans for me, it would seem, for when we arrived at the bottom of the shaft I was quickly apprehended by the men and thrust in all directions. They were deaf to my protestations, but I managed to escape relatively unscathed. One of them pressed against the ground with his boot, possibly in preparation for my hasty execution. During the scuffle, the medallion slipped from my pocket. The men took great interest at this turn of events, bringing me to my feet at once.

Once upright, I could see the faces behind the fierce light of their helmets and learned at once that these men were not the ruddy miners who had greeted me at the start of the descent, but a group of sickly albinos in close approximations of their gear. How I had been spirited away from the group without my becoming aware of it was beyond me, for I was quite alert throughout the venture. Whatever the cause, I found myself in the midst of the Cult behind the cults.

The pale men led me down a series of corridors until we reached what I can only regard as a steep and impossibly long ramp. Though at first it was dark as the rest of the cave system, it soon gave way to reddish light that seemed to emanate from all directions. As we walked, I could see the beginnings of ore and mineral veins that would make even the richest of princes salivate with envy, but the wan albinos passed them without so much as a glance. It was apparent now how Mr. Bardowin could afford such lavish terms for my work; worldly riches meant nothing to them.

Though robbed of both a timepiece and the light of the sun, I could tell we walked for quite some time—weeks, if my gradual malnourishment was any indication. We only stopped for the occasional sip of an underground spring or a mouthful of whatever fungal growths sprouted from the cave walls, but after a few days of intoxication by hunger, I craved whatever these strange men put before me. In time, I was able to anticipate which of the growths they would offer to me next.

As we descended the four-score miles—if what I could discern from the stratum was any indication—to the terminus of our trip, the bleak cave walls began to give way to stone reliefs depicting scenes of the history of their esoteric order. What I record now may seem suspect from one such as me who beheld them from the cave’s strange light—possibly under the spell of whatever it was they had fed me—but I can tell you from my work on the manuscript that many of the same myth patterns were echoed upon those walls. I cannot tell you what others may make of them, but without the full divulgence from a member of this secretive and murderous group, I gather that I will be the closest the rational world is ever going to come to exposing this obscure knowledge.

In the beginning, everything was cold and void; there was neither time nor space, material nor thought, yet they were. In the negation of all things behind the veil of infinite nothingness, there existed powers and personages beyond the paltry imaginations of man. They were beings in the abstract, wholly beyond categorical identity. Within them natural law breaks down; Archimedes is brought to blush; Apollo dims to their darkness; Pythagoras marvels at their chaos, and Aristotle is rendered insane by the implications.

One of these, a blind idiot god whose name I could not glean from the imagery, lashed out and covered itself with both flesh and the spatial dimensions required for it, burbling and burping into existence the sum total of the material universe. Through great groaning and protestation, this entity arbitrarily secreted all that we have come to regard as reality itself. In an instant, the blind eternities became subject to temporal becoming.

As with any collection of fetid consciousnesses, some of these denizens saw the nascent universe as an occasion to realize their ignoble intents, and thus sought to weave their purposes within it, creating structure where none had before existed so as to banish their enemies into it for motives beyond our comprehension. For beings outside the choking limits of existence itself, a dip within our limited universe is the ultimate degradation. One of them, the first among blasphemers, found herself jettisoned into the dusty mists of this newborn existence. As the waves of space-time began to allow material to both cool and congregate, she found portions of this putrescent universe coalescing around her.

This revelation was the answer to my dilemma: the marriage of their casual cosmology to their troubling myth structure. It would appear that the very earth itself formed around a central mass, and that mass had a title: C’tan, the center of all things; C’tan, the breath of the earthen waves; C’tan, she who wraps herself with life; C’tan, who feeds the mountains and breathes the valleys; C’tan, the mother of matriarchs. Many titles akin to these were repeated with the utmost love and devotion, giving rise to the implication that the theoretical molten core of our otherwise solid earth was none other than C’tan herself, generating heat by the intensity of her indignation.

But even a universe-bound cosmic entity was not without its machinations. So complete was her supremacy over those who sought to maroon her within our pitiless entropy, they realized it was only a matter of time before she found a means of liberation. In order to keep her safely within our universe, they fashioned another universe entirely. What immense power those of the Outer Void must wield, and how great a threat C’tan must represent, if the only way to constrain her was to weave a new and concurrent realm within the confines of our humble universe. Seeking to keep her at bay, they knitted together the realm of dreams and placed it upon her like a sheet.

This would not be adequate if it were not sustained, however, so they sought to strengthen it first by banishing other Elder Gods to the pits of our troubled earth, taking the time to fashion cities and other niceties for them, half in one reality, half in the next. These creatures would dream away their material torment until such time that it would be all rendered moot by C’tan’s eventual emergence. These lesser denizens of the cosmic infinitude hated and reviled their betters for this labor, and would seek to overturn their intentions whenever the opportunity presented itself, often when the stars were right and the veil between voids was at its weakest.

The proximity of these powerful denizens attracted the attentions of lesser souls: cheaper, strictly material beings of immense age and ability. These elder things and their servants added to the power of the dream realm that sought to keep the great and unspoken C’tan from erupting from under their feet, but the fools kept warring with one another, never once suspecting that their sheer multiplicity aided in them retaining their souls. Though they could not understand the immensity of the forces at work, they began to worship and war for the favor of the indifferent.

Soon they all but wiped themselves out, leaving only the scattered remnants of their immense civilizations beneath the waves and atop the icy expanses. This was a terrible time, for C’tan began to stir, growing and metamorphosing as the waves toiled and the mountains bubbled. As the dream realm weakened, she hastened her transformation from ignoble worm to cosmic terror, ready to tear asunder the veil of our physical universe and storm the gates of the lesser blasphemies, rendering our corporeal cosmos a forgotten and lifeless husk.

Eventually a very nascent humanity came upon the earth, and so filled it with strife and turmoil that we were able to add that minuscule but integral amount of power to the ever-changing dream realm, building our own cities within the lands of the frog and rat-like creatures already dwelling there. When the more psychically sensitive began to discern there were older, more powerful beings dreaming beneath our notice, they began to worship them as a dust mite wound an elephant, only a trillion times more so. The image attested to the most powerful of these, the great Cthulhu, rendering it with the same contempt I had gleaned from the manuscript.

Inevitably, some of these men discovered the terrible secret of the dream realm and its intent. Though our primitive ancestors had began worshiping them long ago, the earth’s most intelligent flees became frightened, realizing that everything they held dear rested upon C’tan, who was ever working to burst from the earth and ascend from the pit of existence. These obscure sages knew such knowledge would surely plunge the world into chaos, so they split themselves into factions, each choosing a god before seeking to ingratiate themselves within the primitive orders. Once accepted, they would then task the cult with keeping their gods in slumber, for if any one of them managed to awaken for any length of time the dream realm would be shattered. Our aggregated earthen minds are simply not powerful enough to sustain it on our own.

As with all human endeavors, there are also those who seek to undermine them. There arose a faction, a noble and secretive enterprise if I’m to believe the artistry, who also sought to weave themselves within the various cults and feed into the very human need to see their gods move. Thus corrupted, the cults would then attempt to awaken those beings they had been tasked to keep in slumber. By my own anecdotal account at the shore, so complete was this subterfuge that the cults have been perverted to such a degree as to have completely forgotten their original intent, and now unknowingly work towards a very different aim: the emergence of C’tan, a rapturous and mystical occurrence in which her most devoted will rise from this mortal insignificance and fly on her wings to storm the Eternal Void. There was no allotment for hope within their mythology; all that existed was desperate, bitter, pitiless, dreadful, putrescent, cold, callous existence. Even the elect few did not consider themselves exempt from the horrors they would find on the other side of eternity, but sought it as an alternative to the meaningless husk they sought to escape. So as Hastur’s servants seek to increase his borders beyond the Hyades by bringing civilization to ruin, and as the esoteric orders endeavor to stir their respective sovereigns, and as yet others endeavor for a stratified extinction for political ends, C’tan grows.

…Or so taught the reliefs. The truth of the universe’s advent was inextricably linked to their theology, but how did they come by the knowledge originally? This was to remain a mystery, for by the time we reached the sanctity of flat earth once more, I was ready to believe anything. I’m not sure if the mold-like substance they fed me had any hallucinogenic properties, but I assure you that any lingering effects ceased as soon as the staggering heat began to accost me.

As you may be aware, the heat of earth’s inner sanctum is something that any deep miner has had to contend with, and yet this effect was kept at bay for the duration of our descent. But upon reaching the deepest depths, this general coolness was replaced with an intense, enervating heat. As my pale captives stripped themselves bare, I found myself doing the same out of sheer desperation. I gasped in a frantic attempt acclimate myself to the moist, stagnant heat as I was surrounded by an immense group of naked and scarred quasi-humans as they readied themselves for their induction ceremony. They began chanting and whipping themselves in earnest with obsidian-dusted leather, standing in such a way so that their hot blood fell mostly upon my person. This practice didn’t surprise me, as these kinds of displays were unsettlingly common in religious communities that disparage material existence.

As weak as they were—bless them—they helped me to my feet and led me into an aperture at the center of the expanse. As they led me down what at first appeared to be a narrow staircase, it quickly opened to small stair-like slats affixed to the sides of an immense stalactite hanging over a pit as wide as the very oceans themselves. I could barely stand as the dizzying heights overcame my reason, but my escorts held me fast. What I witnessed that day brought me to this place, for after seeing it I found the strength to scramble the miles to the surface where you found me, screaming and laughing and cutting my flesh like a madman.

What does it sound like when a man’s worldview descends into splinters? What is left for his mind to anchor itself upon when his every assumption gasps for air from under the bulk of its collapsing weight? The body fidgets while the mind reels, aching for the millions of unspoken foundations upon which the intellect had once taken root. The mind scrambles for them, clutching after them as they sink deeper and deeper into the all-consuming mire of a new and terrible certainty.

I hurry to finish these words before I once again descend into the likes of a gibbering idiot. As I sit within the consoling depths of the asylum, I contemplate once more just what happens when the soul dies yet the body carries on. I presume I will continue to do so until I return to that state of blissful, sheltering madness I so covet. Until such a time, I am stuck with the uncanny, terrestrial pedestrianism of it all, of how life continues to amble on as countless souls shuffle hither and yon, busying themselves on a trillion different trifles that distract them from their utter insignificance.

For I tell you now the truth of all things, the final straw that shattered what had once been a healthy mental comportment. I looked down into that unfathomable pit and I saw a wall as big as the world itself, encompassing more than the totality of the ocean waves. I witnessed the center of all things, that which these pale creatures worshiped with their internecine machinations and political wrangling to assure the emergence of their god. I beheld the wall of the world, and it was writhing!