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that last amorphous blight of nether-most confusion where bubbles and
blasphemes at infinity's centre the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose
name no lips dare speak aloud.
Unswerving and obedient to the foul legate's orders, that hellish bird plunged
onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness, and
vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped and groped and pawed;
the
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%20by%20H_%20P_%20Lovecraft.txt nameless larvae of the Other Gods, that are
like them blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and
thirsts
Onward unswerving and relentless, and tittering hilariously to watch the
chuckling and hysterics into which the risen song of night and the spheres had
turned, that eldritch scaly monster bore its helpless rider; hurtling and
shooting, cleaving the uttermost rim and spanning the outermost abysses;
leaving behind the stars and the realms of matter, and darting meteor-like
through stark formlessness toward those inconceivable, unlighted chambers
beyond time wherein
Azathoth gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of
vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes.
Onward - onward - through the screaming, cackling, and blackly populous gulfs
-
and then from some dim blessed distance there came an image and a thought to
Randolph Carter the doomed. Too well had Nyarlathotep planned his mocking and
his tantalising, for he had brought up that which no gusts of icy terror could
quite efface. Home - New England - Beacon Hill - the waking world.
"For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of
what you have seen and loved in youth... the glory of Boston's hillside roofs
and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the
great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet
valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily... this loveliness,
moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your
terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with
curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded
steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to
turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood."
Onward - onward - dizzily onward to ultimate doom through the blackness where
sightless feelers pawed and slimy snouts jostled and nameless things tittered
and tittered and tittered. But the image and the thought had come, and
Randolph
Carter knew clearly that he was dreaming and only dreaming, and that somewhere
in the background the world of waking and the city of his infancy still lay.
Words came again - "You need only turn back to the thoughts and visions of
your wistful boyhood." Turn - turn - blackness on every side, but Randolph
Carter could turn.
Thick though the rushing nightmare that clutched his senses, Randolph Carter
could turn and move. He could move, and if he chose he could leap off the evil
Shantak that bore him hurtlingly doomward at the orders of Nyarlathotep. He
could leap off and dare those depths of night that yawned interminably down,
those depths of fear whose terrors yet could not exceed the nameless doom that
lurked waiting at chaos' core. He could turn and move and leap - he could - he
would - he would - he would.
Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and desperate
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dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient blackness he fell. Aeons
reeled, universes died and were born again, stars became nebulae and nebulae
became stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless voids of
sentient blackness.
Then in the slow creeping course of eternity the utmost cycle of the cosmos
churned itself into another futile completion, and all things became again as
they were unreckoned kalpas before. Matter and light were born anew as space
once had known them; and comets, suns and worlds sprang flaming into life,
though nothing survived to tell that they had been and gone, been and gone,
always and always, back to no first beginning.
And there was a firmament again, and a wind, and a glare of purple light in
the eyes of the falling dreamer. There were gods and presences and wills;
beauty and evil, and the shrieking of noxious night robbed of its prey. For
through the unknown ultimate cycle had lived a thought and a vision of a
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