Follow the Sepulchral Trails: Chapter 1 Chapter 2:1 Chapter 2:2
From nothing, all began. In nothing it will be laid to rest. This is the way of all things.
Even as the great sea of the Cosmos expands, its stars erupt, obliterating solar systems and sending formless offal adrift on aether waves, inflating towards eternity… until all that remains is rubble. An abyssal graveyard in which crumbled headstones separate along trajectories that extend into nothing. Waiting… on another beginning.
But what knew no beginning may never rest. Outside all things They remain, looking on as universes thrive and wither by the multitudes— the great ebb and flood of the multiverse that stirs all but Them.
Amid these great motions, even the most optimal of mankind’s beginnings and endings occupy the same cosmic instant, flitting from nothing to nothing, as insignificant as an unformed thought. A fleeting, fragile thing, it cannot fathom the eternal. Nor can it hope to understand true nothingness.
Yet in its infancy it gleaned Them. It sensed the Dark, and the Light that had held back its gluttonous tide. Soft minds felt Their pull. From the deep and loathsome places of the earth, where darkness laid in deathless slumber. From the molten heart of Betelgeuse, where the Watchers perched. From outside, where They lit dreaming minds afire.
It called them Gods. It gave Them Words of tribute and built Places of worship in Their honor. It learned Their Rites and invoked Their names. And gained favor.
As its pitiful rock turned, Places were burned and raised, and atop their ruins, new places arose. New gods. What Words they had were lost and retold, and put down anew, until they showed only pale reflections of what was and is, and will ever be.
Until only the Earth itself remembered.
Still now it shudders and cracks where They lie, and makes the cities of Man cry out in torment for its ignorance. Still the wind howls in lunatic voices through impassable ranges that mark Their restless graves. Theirs are the desolate, diseased places, where nothing takes root and calamity rules. The jagged maw of the distant cave, where the walls whisper and confuse, and hapless adventurers die lost in its freezing depths. The endless desert where even the Light itself grows hateful. Know Them by the floods and the sliding rock, by the earth that slakes itself with ceaseless bloodshed. Here, They lie. Entombed by the Light, which used the stars themselves to hold Them in Their dismal Places, even through Death itself.
So haunted, the dull orb spins, carrying its dead with it as it goes. While all about it, the aether ripples out and distance grows between its lights. Betelgeuse gutters, long since abandoned and left to its dying struggles. And Those who kept watch are pulled out on receding tides.
And with strange aeons, even Gods forget.
The Light fades. The stars have slipped. Now, Their time begins anew.
How potent the Dark’s call. How effortless it finds willing minds. While the Light’s churches have failed, Their Words have never been forgotten. Where Their names have been uttered, the very air still hangs spoiled and rotted. In these plagued Places, hearts burn with murder and minds unravel, held by Their lifeless dreams. And Man’s knowledge of Light’s magic is gone, unable to repair what has been done. Here, inconceivable touches stretch the worn-out fabric of time and space itself. So close now. So close.
Even now, the first Terrors have been called forth to blight the land. How quick their minds come undone in Their shadows, how eager they rush into madness, unaware of the insignificance of these Lesser Ones. Spawn. Wretched crossbreeds. Trembling with endless hunger, They watch this unfit vanguard. The Ones that have been defeated once before. Even Him.
But not this time.
They can feel it. The Veil is all but spent. The Light has turned its Eyes to other matters. Yog-Sothoth has seen it. Once the Starspawn has been awakened, the way will be free, and Man will know the names of its true Gods.
Here, now, comes the Age of Nyarlathotep. The Reign of Shub-Niggurath, The Goat With A Thousand Young! The Rule of Yig! A thousand thousand years of servitude, under black stars, until the Feaster consumes the nothingness itself, and there will be no more endings. No more beginnings. Only Their sacred geometries, seething in glorious triumph throughout the infinite Aeons of the Outer Gods.
—END OF CHAPTER 3—
jeez that opening dude
Ah! Lovecraft would bow down. Fantastic work!