Twixt Earth and Moon lie creatures whose existence I’d never even suspected. Unless you peer upwards through a device wrought by the dark astronomical arts you’d never perceive them. Vile, amorphous shapes loose in the Earth’s halo, sheltered by the mystic shroud the Moon casts over them. Wizened travellers from the birth of time, they lie in wait about our tiny hub of life; they wait to consume it.Extolling the virtues of Nethersight the priesthood of Tzazanoth hold rituals ghastly and foul at the Lunar apex. “Yield to our influence, embrace the sacred blinding hood and have your will sapped and fed to the masters”. Zealotry drives them and their combination of archaic speech and sensory deprivation appealed to me.
After I succumbed to their ideals I found myself clad in black, kneeling in a ring about their temple enclave. By midnight we were cold and bored, the other devotees and I. Calling for the undead gods of a dimension twisted between our own and the death of the universe was tiring.
Despite the lack of response from hours of incantation and exhortation the Tzazanothian priesthood’s spirits remained high. Ever optimistic of summoning the end of the world they bade us rise and bear flaming brands. “Fling them moonward” they cried with their slackened faces and blazing eyes. Galling though it is to admit now I too tossed my torch into the air. I was stunned when it hung there, seemingly lodged in some invisible structure. Just as I was thinking of slipping out the back too.
Keys were produced by the priests, great horned pieces of filigreed iron which they raised and twisted in the air. Light of a dark and ethereal nature rained down on us like burning rainbows. My eyes burned with unnatural hues, men fell screaming to the ground, their minds unable to grasp the palette of the undead gods. Near the heart of the temple formed an apparition: a twisting figure of wings and writhing tentacles which obscured a fanged skull and hungry leer.
Obsidian blood spattered over us, soaking the ground, rising to our knees and hardening the portal into the undead realm. Perhaps it was then that the reality of the ritual finally hit me – I could not be party to this welcoming of death. Quickly I leaped for the nearest key which had become ossified in the air and with a savage twist, snapped the head off it.
Really, that was the diametric opposite to my intention. So the gateway could not now be closed; gargantuan forms laughed at us their horrid laughter echoing like the death of stars through time. That was my part in the revenance of Earth my friends, and that is why we huddle now in this cellar as Tzazanoth’s hordes scratch at the door.
