"I have seen much unmeant for mortal eyes in my wanderings beneath that dark and forgotten city. It is not the splendours of Irem that haunt my dreams with this madness, but another place, a place shrouded in utter silence; long unknown to man and shunned even by ghoul and nightgaunt. A stillness likened to millions of vanished years pressed with great heaviness upon my soul as I trod those labyrinths in terror, ever fearing that my footfalls might awaken the dread architects of this nameless region where the hand of time is bound and the wind does not whisper.
Great was my fear of this place, but greater was the strange sleep-like fascination that gripped my mind and guided my feet ever downwards through realms unknown. My lamp cast it's radiance upon basalt walls, revealing mighty pillars hewn surely by no human hand, where curiously stained obelisks engraved with frightful images and cryptic characters reared above me into the darkness. A passage sloped before me, I descended. For what seemed to be an eternity I descended rapt in contemplation of the grim icons that stretched endlessly on either hand, depicting the strange deeds of Those Great Ones born not of mortal womb. They had dwelt here and passed on, yet the walls of the edifice bore Their mark: vast likenesses of those terrible beings of yore carved beneath a firmament of unguessed asterisms.
Endlessly the way led downwards, ever downwards. The passage of time had fled from my mind, Hypnos and eternity held my soul.
How long, how far had I journeyed? I knew not. Then like one awaking from the dreams of Narcaeus my eyes beheld a door which barred my path. Their Sign was upon it, The Sign which I have seen within the tomb-caverns of Leng, amidst the pillars of Irem , and borne before the idols of cryptic Isnavor. I trembled as I beheld the dark inscriptions which covered the jaded stone writhe like a thousand hideous serpents, sometimes their reptilian forms darting toward each other as if in conflict, sometimes joining to form creatures of nauseous bulk once more to divide into a twisting host of black serpentine characters.
Before my eyes the door was rolled up as if it were a scroll and I gazed upon the void beyond, where amongst strange stars great darkling forms moved. Like the moaning of a great wind terrible voices assailed my ears with a cry of a thousand souls in torment. The forbidden names of Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, Nyarlathhotep and a hundred more seared my brain like venomous vitriol. Their minds entered my being and I learned of blasphemous things undreamt by mortal man and of a realm beyond our time and creation where the blind demon sultan Azathoth dwells within the pit of Chaos throughout the countless aeons of infinity.
Then with thunderous roar the stars whirled before me in a great coiling vortex and I was drawn into that nameless abyss like a leaf before the tempest . My screams of terror yielded to merciful oblivion and darkness engulfed me.
I awoke amidst the silent sands of the red desert to behold the great orb of the sun proclaiming the dawn. I arose, and turning to the North set my feet towards Damascus where I, Their scribe, must write my book. For beyond the Pillars of Hercules, dreaming crystals call."
