The Red Sign

by Sunken EldritchSpires

Rating: teen
Tags: Dark
Length: 5720

“I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.” - HP Lovecraft

“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.”
-Nemesis

The streets of Canterlot whisper.

The northerly winds usher in sanguine snow.

Strange things are happening in the dark corners of the city.

Horrors are unfolding.

Nightmares waking from their black abysses…

The Mare in Red cometh.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-12-27 02:00:03 UTC

Nemesis

The Red Song

It shall never leave me, that abominable performance of the esoteric and mysterious, the primeval power of the Crimson Mare who all should flee from in unquestionable terror. I can no longer rely on notions of madness or hallucination to explain of what occurred within that collapsed and decaying chapel, and thus must attempt to describe as best I can the eternal terror which is… ‘She’.

The news of the city has explained the chaos of that night as a strange universal madness, or mass hysteria of the entire crowd and culture. It was suggested by colts and mares of science that it was perhaps caused by delusions brought about by slight chemical imbalances, or by accidental tainting of the water and cisterns of the city by subversive narcotic materials… but would such madness linger so long amidst those that it infected? I see as I have ever more seen since that night.  I was, and I am, forever there in that chapel on the wings of each dream, it is the inevitable, the inescapable doom.

I remember it began in a bleak December.

The winds that howled through the streets had a strange foreboding to them, and I shudder to think what they whispered on her approach. A crimson snow had descended and baffled the stallions of science, it also disturbed those who had first seen it which is queer attributes and suggestive qualities of ichorous blood. Vague suggestions were made of red dust blown from the Zebra deserts was used as some form of rational explanation to the phenomenon, but many huddled in taverns and shops murmured in hushed tones of stranger things which roamed abroad.

A sense of profound tension had settled fetid and rank above our beloved city of Canterlot. The nobility of the city, once so haughty and proud showed an overriding sudden disillusionment with the status quo. Rumours spread of hooded aristocrats traversing  the alleyways  looking for obscene pleasures of the flesh and exotic  oriental drugs to bring them alien visions of a strange beyond.

A decadent counterculture formed in the seedy backwaters of the city, and strangely dressed figures enacted hedonic rituals to appease something unknown, even to them.

I had been living in a rundown hotel at the time, whose cracked facades and crumbling stonework hinted at a past as a prominent antiquated establishment , now lost to time and the ravages of the elements.Amidst this crumbling splendour, I had been investigating into this sudden change in the daily lives of the people of Canterlot. I provided journalistic pieces for a spurious newspaper on the shocking values of the Decadents.

I was not overly  keen about my work, for I found the articles I had to write for this sensationalist rag were frequently and disgustingly without a factual basis. They worked more on shocking illusory fantasies than anything close to the truth. Still, it was only my profession which kept me out of the destitution of poverty. So I continued to write, if only to keep myself above that dreaded lifestyle.

It was during my residency within this crumbling necropolis that I meet the young and decadent noble, Goldensong. How I wish we had not met during that Red December. Perhaps both of us would still be alive if we had not been there in that bleak hotel, and whispered so freely on the mysteries beyond the veil of reality…

Goldensong’s lineage was that of a  proud and ancient  dynasty of Canterlot elite,  but had found his life, simplistic, dull,and uninspiring. When he had first heard of the hedonistic movement of the Decadents he joined with the utmost enthusiasm, his life suddenly inspired by repugnant orgies and horrifying dark pleasures. He told tales of occult rituals and strange magic under the honest streets of Canterlot, and hinted at the existence of complete copies of the “Libro Tenebris Mysteria” a tome of nightmares,  written by a  dark  wanderer countless eons ago in the shadowlands of Pre-Equestrian history.

It was from him that I drew the juicy details of my articles. His midnight excursions founded the basis of some of my best selling pieces of journalism, the Cult of Hakkuth, the Dance of Masks, the Whispering of the Cathedral and the Shadesong Nightmare. From this I built up at least some sense of pride in my work, for Goldensong’s exploits were no fantasy and were instead factual and deeply shocking, beyond even the most wild imaginings of fiction writers of the gothic and macabre.

Despite his eccentricities I could not help but admire him. I knew  his actions were rather disturbing, but his mind was one which I could only observe in awe, and which showed the foundations of a highly gifted intelligence. Often we talked for long hours late into the night on the natures of equine kind, the fragility of our society and the mysteries of time and space. Frequently we discoursed of recent scientific matters regarding the existence of other dimensions, and how things from one place might be able to travel to another without movement at all, by folding space. Once we considered there might be such beings, tapping into the porous fabric of the universe and crawling through into other worlds and other times. However, we soon shook off the disturbing notion and laughed about such things, for they seemed more on the side of pulp fiction than true and factual reality.

Yet despite the false joviality, all around us the city seemed to darken and brood with a vague and unexplainable expectancy. It was as if we were waiting upon some dark estranged royalty to arrive and claim all in a black mantle of fear. Quietly some mentioned the Canterlot invasion by the Changeling hordes, and the guards and royalty of the court seemed to share a universal nervous energy, although they seemed not to know not whence it came.

As blizzards  of red ice and snow screamed around us, rumours ran wild of strange inexplicable things, the entire city seemed to progress in a hushed silence of twisted life. There were terrifying hints of strange things which prowled on the rooftops, and mysterious reports of such things tittering and bleating hideously whilst cavorting in the red tempests of the night. Sometimes some animals would be found in the morning, half devoured as if by a monstrous pack of Timberwolves. One time, a hideous thing was found in the morning after a night storm which had wailed so terribly,that it seemed as if the dead had risen to claim the living in a frozen dead-ponies grip. An old beggar was found mangled on the wayside in light of morning.His dead eyes had stared with such frozen terror that few could stand his gaze for long... nor look at his flesh, which some twisted work of the wind had rent so deeply as to make him almost unrecognisable as an equine.

After this lanterns were shuttered and windows closed, and it was rare to see anyone who walked the snowy red streets of Canterlot. Those who did huddled to the sides of buildings and peered suspiciously at other passersby, as if expecting some foul evil to emerge and devour them.

Then it finally came, and the city seemed draw a breath inwards in indescribable horror.

I remember when I first heard of it.

“The Lady in Red.”

She had descended amongst the Decadents and caused such a stir that hundreds were drawn in repulsive rapture. I had returned from the grocery and from an experience with a shopkeeper who was brooding and curt, in complete opposition to the normal nature of the city which was so proud of its quality of service. As I had paused to fumble at the lock with my rusty key,I felt a  cold and clammy hoof press upon my shoulder.

Startled I jumped, dropping my keys to the ground.

It was Goldensong, but not the Goldensong that I knew.

His eyes were feverish and maddened, stretched wide and hideously vacant. His coat and mane were wet and rancid with the stench of sweat and fear. He looked haggard and gaunt, as if aged monsterously by some malign force. Celestia above, I tell you now, it had only been but a day since I had last seen him! But most abhorrent of all was the monstrous humour within his eyes filled me with such dread and loathing that I could no longer see him as my wayward friend. “It” was an alien malice, “it” was not Goldensong. I recoiled from him in absolute disgust and abhorrence, terrified of that insane stare which seemed to bore  into my soul like hot coals.

Finally after a long and agonising silence, he broke the paralytic tension with a rasping, choking whisper.

“You must see her…”

“Who?” I asked, still taken aback at his decline in appearance and horrified at his changed demeanor.

“The Crimson Mare.” He leered at me with rotten teeth; teeth which I knew had been white as alabaster when he had left but yesterday.

“Who is she?”

“She is… The Lady in Red.”

“…Why must I see her, Goldensong?”

He cocked his head to one side, his expression never changing.  I wondered if he if the strange rituals and rancid opiates had rotted his mind. For a long time he was silent and for a moment I thought that he might stay like this, like a broken machine, unable to speak or move, or think.

But finally he replied.

“Go and see The Crimson Mare, for she is both beautiful and terrible! All shall change and things shall awake that should not! Come! See as she dances in the moonlight, look! Watch the black roses  spring from her hoofsteps! She is older than equinekind, more ancient than the mountain of Canter, and more knowing than the summation of the equine race from the times of the first civilisation of Thurim. She has been, and shall be, eternal…the immortal and beautiful nightmare of this universe.”

By the time he  fell silent, his eyes looked ready to burst from their sockets, blood dripped from his cracked lips and he pulled back his head as if hit by something of incredible force, and then he screamed a scream which turned my bones to ice and my flesh to water. It must have continued for an eternity, amidst the howling it seemed as if it something else whispered in unison with the scream, hinting darkly of what was to come.

Then he stopped.

An eerie quiet ruled sovereign, it felt like hours but it could have only been seconds.

Then he turned and fled, shrieking and howling once again, screaming into the dark as he plunged into the blackness of night. I stood there, alone, confused, frightened… and horrified as  the thing which had once been one of my closest companions as he disappeared, leaving no trace he had ever been.

From that moment on, through every second of the day, a terrible craving consumed me. It urged and harassed me ceaselessly in the dark confines of the night until the light of morning. It raked at me like hot needles and caused restless and monstrous dreams to emerge, howling of strange and peculiar things.

These horrific night fantasies dragged me off to  far flung places and transdimensional nightmare planes of existence, where strange and abominable beings gibbered and shrieked under black stars and queer four dimensional angles. Amongst it all was the hideous and degenerate nocturnal piping of a sundered flute, clutched by a beast whose vocal capacity must have been dementedly mutated.

Once I saw a dark shape as infinite as the cosmos before me,  lit only by a dull hidden light, and billions of unseen shadow things flopped and fluttered about it in rings to the discordant fury of some  primeval chant. Then that thing which hid the light opened it’s single eye and I screamed in horror. On that night of terror I realised the cosmic minuteness of our race, which floats like a mote of dust in the morning sky, amongst dreaming, uncaring gods who have dwelt forever in this universe.

Ia! Ia! Nhyo-Shai’than! The father of all demons! Un’drezkh-Nkh-ai! Un’drezkh-Nkh-ai!

Feverishly I drew these midnight phantasms which attacked me, utilising my limited skill at portraying the monstrous things which invaded my every waking moment. My drawings were awful and hideous, leering eyes and dripping amorphous flesh, like a grotesque mockery of all that was sacred. It was of such repugnance that when my landlord visited,  he nearly dropped dead with fright at the demoniacal  collage of the cadaverous ancients.

Whilst I practiced my obscene art, I heard rumours that amongst the dreamers, the poets, the artisans and sculptors, that there was produced the strangest of artistry ever seen. Their work was much like mine, and like my own its inspiration was restrained solely to the duration of this “Red December”, where strange dreams inspired them with “their otherworldly grace”.

Those familiar with the artistic community will no doubt recall the shocking and otherworldly productions of Pallet Brush and his nightmarish display “Dreams of the Inner World”. Critics denounced it as wildly as the Decadents supported it, and he caused such a stir in his Canterlot display that he and his work was violently ejected from a gallery.

His visions and dreamscapes are however, no more.  On the day of the final “performance” he doused himself in gasoline and lit a match, destroying himself and his artwork in a fiery inferno in his apartment whilst laughing in madness as the flames crisped and devoured his flesh.

Still, rumour remains of the survival of that hell-spawned piece, “Song of the Raging God” which was the centrepiece of so much controversy. Some stallions- now insane - claim it is a window to the worlds beyond, like the work of the lost painter who portrayed what has been named “The Library of Xhav’xh’azak”.

Soon after the incident with the landlord, I burned the complete collection of my dream pictures in the backyard, using petroleum due to the difficulties with the strange red snow, which seemed to act like no natural snow I had ever encountered. It was as if it devoured heat and flames, warmth acting little to melt the ice crystals it seemed to be made of. I wondered greatly at how it could do such a thing.

Still the niggling beckoning of that name called at me in the night endlessly. Finally, upon the winter solstice when the golden sun had fled beyond the horizon by the magic of Celestia, I decided.

It must be done.

I must go to The Lady in Red.

Goldensong had long since fled into the madness which I now began to experience in full, and had since been locked up in the Canterlot asylum. I had visited him briefly on occasion, but the only thing I managed to pull from his lips was the maddening cackling of an insane creature, consumed by the torturous flames of lunacy.

“She knows the way!” he once shrieked “She knows the way, the olden way, the ancient way, the forgotten way! Through time and space she has walked, drifting on cosmic winds of infinity and dreamworlds of impossibility. All shall be one in Nhyoa-Shai’than!   He who hath slept in the abyss for ten billion years in the dream song which harkens his rising!”

When I pressed for details, asking who she was and from whence she came, he only tittered and frothed, falling into an epileptic fit, which the doctors told me had become frequent since his interment. He was not long for the world the doctors stated, as  the fits were proving severely disruptive to his health, making him frailer each day.

I knew the dangers now, for had I not peered into the pages of the dreaded ‘Libro Tenebris Mysteria’ and seen that unutterable name which now haunted my dreams and the hallucinations of the stallion who had once been my friend? Who can question the horrifying and fetid suggestions of the Black Monk of Tyr’hm when he spoke of that foul entity:

“And ye shalt see him in his blacke palace, and thee music shalt rend thy ears, for it is not for the ken of mortals to understande. Nhyo-Shai’than is Supreme, Nhyo-Shai’than again shalt be Supreme, Nhyo-Shai’than shalt evermore be Supreme.  He will lie dreaming until the clashing bells in the stygian sepulchre peal forthe and awaketh him, and all ye should perish before the red gazing eye, for is he not that which shalt be the immortal majesty of all?”

As I entered the outside world, itself lit by a queer hunter’s moon whose bloodied face was cast ever brighter by the shining of the crimson snow, it seemed as if my world was collapsing around me… Collapsing within the red! Collapsing through time, through space, through all of reality!

The moon  should not be stained with the red, Nor the ground…

But it was.

She was here…

The Lady in Red is here.

So I stooped and crawled amidst the sprawling pits of decay that were the new and secret city of Canterlot. I spoke with the high Decadents upon the nature of the strange mare who had come to our fair city, and who it seemed had caused so much change in her wake. Amongst the opium riddled minds and fleeting thoughts of these fallen and pale individuals, I heard the whispers.

She was a beauty beyond compare. But none had seen her face. It was hidden by a silver mask of eldritch design and mystical origin, covered in crimson bandages of the finest silk and embroidered with runes of costly platinum wire. She would only show her true appearance at the height of her performances, for she was a musician.

Ah, but such a musician!

Her music wove new fantastical vistas of beauty and reached tones and styles impossible even  to comprehend, let alone to know or see. They were ineffable, transient, euphoric and terrible, like a rising tempest of a storm before an inevitable cataclysm. If there were gods, then she would be the god of all music. Her performances varied however; sometimes she showed visions of supreme beauty that the audience were reduced to tears of joyous awe. But sometimes… oh sometimes… she would show the terror of the true reality, the cosmic forces beyond mortal understanding and the audience wept and shook with horror and madness before the titans of the universe.

During her performance, certain other performers would add to the terrible and mighty song with their own chorus. These strange jesters, these horrible children of the red night who spoke of things unutterable, who screamed of that which was unnameable, and who laughed of things unspeakable. They came in flowing robes of crimson that were just like the mares, but they were misshapen, malformed and horribly leering terrors that hid their hideousness beneath even more horrible bone masks of a species alien, atrocious and cosmically powerful. They were her guardians who served and protected her; those who sought her harm would never be seen again once they met that overflowing malice… the malice of the guardians.

The mare was preparing for a final performance; thousands were desperate to see this final song of the Lady in Red. Hundreds swarmed and buzzed with excitement, but only those marked with the Red Sign would bare their eyes to the majesty of pure song. That was the bargain. That was the cost.

The further I delved into the underground of Canterlot the more I saw the sights which horrified and terrified me.

It is true that our culture had not always been the highest standard, even amongst the nobles of the kingdom there had been some who had stooped to low levels and degenerate actions. But what I saw within this warren, this rat’s nest of narcotics, wine and delirium was worse than the gravest crimes of those before. The nobility had sunk to complete moral collapse and amongst the myriads of the mindless was the singular will to practice monstrous appeasements to a greater power.

Cells formed in the decayed ruins of tottering caverns, obscene chants and rituals were performed.

Sacrifices of equine and animal were prepared for a terrible awakening.

Thunder sounded in the deep.

The police and the royal guard were driving themselves into a wild frenzy suppressing the cults, but for every one they brought to a halt another two sprung forth. Like foul maggots,  the insane and dreamlike worshippers escaped, writhing and tunnelling through the ground, bringing further chaos to the underground world of Canterlot.

On the night of the final performance,  the slums suddenly swarmed at midnight, an insane riot began around me where only an hour before had been silence. Across the roofs swarmed dancing equines, armed with crossbows and blocking the Canterlot authorities access to this part of the city, and I was caught in the midst of it. Princess Celestia appealed for order, but the masses could not be contained. A nightmare stalked the red land and it would not leave until it had quenched its thirst.

A great array of art and religious banners and signs of runic quality suddenly emerged, and hundreds of ponies bowed in reverence to a strange idol which squatted nameless and indescribably before them.

As I progressed I saw many more of the products of nameless things in art and sculpture.  Across the underworld of slobbering abhorrence, visionary statues, holding characteristics of demons and angels, but melded in one thunderous cosmic entity of the eldritch. These figures stank of an evil too noxious to walk the pure earth and I did not look at them too long, for the sake of my sanity… and my soul.

Amongst the heaving tides of ponies, a hundred red robed priests, their hides painted with eldritch symbols made from ground haematite, screamed out hellish prophecies amidst tumbling swarms of ponies who raged and frothed in religious fervour.

Surely the end times had come,  they howled, for had not the Crimson One spoken of it? Had not the signs foretold of its coming? Symbols in the entrails spoke that the time of red was upon the world, and all would become a holocaust of freedom and power.

I shuddered at the messages, but the hordes of the dreamers screamed out in rapture and celebration. The time was coming, the Old Gods  would arise to devour the new, and all would shatter and die in the Red Dawn.

As I passed in my search for the Crimson mare a, ancient priest, frail and worn by a long life grasped me with unexpected strength and began to gibber of things which I dare not repeat. He clenched my head with his hooves and upon it drew a symbol in the same haematite colour as the priests and which burned like molten rock upon my forehead.

“Blessings of the Red Sign,  brother!” He  cackled and fled into the crowd,  whilst I grimaced in pain and yelled after him, but before I could give chase  he disappeared into the midst of the mob. The ponies in the warrens acted different after that, stopping and staring at me in envious but reverential gazes which perturbed and disturbed me.

Amidst the chaos of the warrens  thousands of red candles glowed ominously, their light giving the streets a sanguine glow ,  which in unison with the unnatural snow and the hunter’s moon gave the streets the appearance of weeping blood. Hundreds of red banners fluttered from every window and every crevice which they could be hoisted, and upon all was either that Red Sign or the dreaded aspect of Nhyo-Shai’than, the seething star god who had slept for billions of years, and who would awake again and plunge the world into madness and fire.

Through the din of chants, mantras and the screaming of preachers, I could hear the far off clamor of vicious fighting. Clearly the officers of the law were attempting to disperse this event as best they could but they  were being violently resisted by tides of worshippers and mad stallions. The air was lit by an innumerable number of sky lanterns, making it almost impossible for any Pegasus to fly safely over the swarm and sidestep the defences. The final performance was being prepared, and nothing would disrupt it.

Beneath the distant rumble of conflict and the murmuring of chants I could hear the endless beating of some mysterious drums in the far off distance. Its  never faltering rhythm filled me with primeval dread.

  A queer night call suddenly resonated from the darkness amidst chimneys and rooftops, and I saw that which made my hooves quake with terror. Across each building roamed strange beings, which cast leprous shadows of utter malice and of unrepentant sin. In the sanguine light, I could only glimpsed hints of tattered flesh and cleft hooves, but their silhouettes before the moon showed that they were no natural beings to this world, they had come from beyond. The crowd let out an undulating chorus to welcome  these diseased creatures’  sudden appearance, and the drumbeats  accelerated to a furious tempo.

Then suddenly they stopped.

An awful hush fell across the crowd, only in the distance where crossbow bolts flew and stallions fought was there any hint of noise. Turning around  I saw that almost all of the ponies were in some sort of paralytic shock, as if some foul revelation had struck them all voiceless. Above in the sky, the sky lanterns glowed like stars in the night… twisted blood y stars.

The crowds parted into columns on each side of the street and I found myself standing awkwardly in the middle of the road as the others stared unblinkingly forward in a dream like stupor. The sound of silk brushing the dusty earth drew my attention,  and I turned and saw a procession of torchbearers, all marching unwaveringly towards an ancient church,  nestled deep within the slums.

But it was not the mindless marchers in red which drew my attention. No, it was the figure which headed them. It was the figure of my dreams and nightmares, the figure which had allured thousands to this esoteric  cause under a red banner, the figure which drove Goldensong to madness.

The Lady in Red.

The world blackened around me, fading into oblivion. I only had eyes for the strange robed mare and it seemed as if I floated amidst the cosmic emptiness of space, orbiting like the sun, around the world... into the stars. I stared into the depths of terror and was drawn inescapably into spider web of the ancient gods, and for the sin of looking, I have been cursed to see these webs forevermore.

The world began to return but with it came the demoniacal  insanity of the world beyond, mad auroras flashed and rolled in endless turmoil, red bolts of lightning flashed from the heavens and screaming abominations revelled and danced amidst the mindless followers of ageless one , to wh om eons were but seconds in the grand cosmic scale of its eternal existence.

I was vaguely aware of marching in line with the torchbearers, hypnotised by the ancient one who lead us inexplicably onwards towards that decayed husk of a temple. The demons on the roofs followed voicelessly, drawn as much as we to this arcane mistress of the forgotten blackness of the first age.

Amidst the clamour of fighting and the screams of the injured – and perhaps the dying -  came suddenly the drumming from the deep once again. But this time, it was no mortal beat which sounded amidst the cabal of demon spawn and the euphoric revelry of those possessed by the Lady in Red.

It was the insane drumming of the shadowed outer sphere.

I do not know how long it was before I completely regained my senses, but when I did,  I sat amongst the crowd of followers, who stared blankly at the Crimson Mare much like the sightless decayed and defaced statues of this ancient holy realm. The degrading splendour of the ancient faith, the Imperial cult, long since withered away by the forces of time and the subtle influence of Celestia,  was arrayed before us like the aged glory of the past. The music in this place had long since ceased to play,  and the ruins of woodworm ridden doors and rotten tapestries showed its complete annihilation.

There should have been the  sound of nesting birds from the dried and shattered roof beams, but none was heard.  A terrible silence ruled within this place, whilst howling through the broken panes of glass came the primordial drumbeat which made my flesh crawl and twisted my mind to sinisterly tint , into a paranoid nightmare.

Through the broken glass and its vestigial lead lined skeleton  the moon looked down upon us hungrily in hatred, the Red had deepened into a sanguine orb.

The eye of Nhyo- Shai’than.

It hung there before the silent masses, lighting up the figure of the Lady in Red like a halo of blood and hideous portent. She stood upon the altar; two hooves raised high in a state of motionless prayer.

From the darkness there came looming before me creatures which almost made me scream in terror, and I choked back a cry as they lurched out from the stygian blackness.

These things, although they wore the visages of the many devotees and the red priests, were not of this earth.

They lunged forward on unsteady, maggot ridden, cleft hooves; their tumour ridden bodies making the garments bulge and protrude in horrific tainted shapes. Their robes were riddled with holes and across their backs, thousands of quill s branched out, whilst coated darkly with some foul vicious ichor! What blasphemous mage-work had spawned such a foul race of demons?!

Their heads were hidden by huge antediluvian masks which looked as if they were drawn from extinguished races long forgotten, and best left to crumble into nothingness! They stared hideously at us with an otherworldly quality which no normal being of the known earth could have held. On the back of their heads stood towering horns stretching out from the flesh like spires of stone, and with each step they took,  their flesh writhed beneath their robes in undulating madness!

From the crowd came an  abhorrent utterance which froze my blood.

“The Gatekeepers…” they wheezed, and I recoiled in horror as I saw a deathly pallor  on each face around me.

From the rafters came a sudden fluttering, as of some night beasts from the darkest recesses of Tartarus had come on foul wings to this blackest of abodes. I looked above and gasped as the superstitious primeval omens of my forefathers came to my mind.

Above flew an endless throng of black Whippoorwills!

Those evil beasts! They stared down at the congregation in mockery, and my horror grew as they began to sing in unbreakable  concord with the now universally singular tempo of breathing of the deathlike cultists. The birds of the reaper, those foul heralds of death, had come to claim the congregations souls!

A howl broke the night, and through the windows,  a monstrous swarm crawled through, like obscene spiders of the nightmare realm. I gibbered madly,  as those dark figures showed monstrous forms as abominable as the Gatekeepers. Their eyes glowed yellow, like fat worms of the putrescent earth,  and their heads sported foul, craven, goatish horns amidst maws which gnashed and roared in overwhelming wrongness.

“The Servitors…” The crowd  wheezed again, and it seemed as if they grew weaker with each breath they took.

And as the Whippoorwills  screamed, as the Gatekeepers howled namelessly an  endless chorus, as the mad abomination spawn revelled and roared, the Lady in Red reached for her mask…

…and pulled it off.

The red  light within sang…

..And I saw the mad corona of a waking god.

In the infinite abyss of flaming red, I saw the fall of all.

Screaming and howling, the Gatekeepers, those mockeries of universal law, spread the mantle of their cloaks and jaws wide. The crowd screamed, and I screamed with them! For those jaws vomited forth visions of the great beyond, the nightmare beyond our fragile sphere, and drove many to frothing epileptic insanity.

A cosmic wind snatched and plucked hundreds from their seats and cast them into the  torturous abyss of the Gatekeepers ’ jaws! Gods have mercy on them! How the jaws of infinity gnawed upon them! How the titans screamed in laughter! How the Servitors slaughtered and glutted upon the crowd with predatory glee!

The gates of Tartarus had opened.

The walls began to soften and melt before my eyes and the world was burning with white fire! Those hideous faces! Those hideous faces which grew with unnatural life from those walls! Those red staring eyes!

Wrong.

Wrong!

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! It was all Wrong!

The moon cracked in two and I saw the Elder god peer through the fragments! The eye of Nhyo-Shai’than! Heavens preserve us!

Nhyo-Shai’than! Father of demons! Destroyer of worlds!

From the blackness came that terrible oily thing, and which caused all to let out a cacophony of screams. For it was the darkest nightmare from the deepest of nightmares, through the endless multitudes of other realities! Oh god, that titan maw! How it feasted upon that universe, whilst reality burned around it!

In the visions from the abyss I saw rising those titan legions of an impossible army. I saw the fall of the modern world! The burning of cities under chitinous abominations! The slopping, glazed, blue eyed Worms which writhed and flailed like maggots at the bottom of the sea. I shrieked for I knew they were! Dear gods! The hideous degenerate swine of the ocean!

A miasma devoured those in the front row and their flesh rotted upon its touch, their screams lit the night like the flames of the inferno around us! The walls were burning! The screeching of the whippoorwills as they flew around us all like the eye of a tornado was deafening and sinister, and I saw them tear into the souls of the dead with mocking glee!

My eyes were cast into the infernal flames of the dreaded moon eye and I saw the future of our dying existence.

The red cyclopean eye loomed in the heavens…

A chasm opened before us all… and within it loomed all the white fire of Tatarus.

That foul jaw stretched wide. A living eldritch nightmare...

The world was engulfed in flames.

For Nhyo-Shai’than feasted.