“My friends, the hour has come. Madness has overtaken this realm and grasped us all in its claws. And now we must drive it back under the rocks whence it came. Madness has had its day!”

I can’t get these memories out of my mind
And some kind of madness has started to evolve
I tried so hard to let you go
But some kind of madness is swallowing me whole

I have finally seen the light
And I have finally realized what you mean

And now I need to know – is this real
Or is it just madness keeping us afloat?
And when I look back at all the crazy fights
Like some kind of madness was taking control

And now I have finally seen the light
And I have finally realized what you need

But now I have finally seen the end
(finally seen the end)
And I’m not expecting you to care, no
(expecting you to care)
That I have finally seen the light
(finally seen the light)
And I have finally realized
(realized)
I need to love
I need to love

Yes I know I can be wrong
Maybe you’re too headstrong
Come to me, just in a dream
Come on and rescue me

I am clearly not myself.

I have always prided myself on behaving with the utmost decorum befitting my station. Pragmatic to a fault, polite and congenial as a matter of course, stern when necessary. Courteous as warranted. Ruthlessly efficient always.

But this gratuitous display of affection. This inept outpouring of emotion. My judgement is questionable, my decisions tantamount to primitive instinct, sheer foolishness.

The way I responded to seeing Farrin, like some flaccid whelp. Her untimely death was unfortunate, but hardly anything I am responsible for; she knew full well what she was getting herself into. I’ll be damned if I’ll be plagued by feelings of guilt or remorse. Such nuisances are for the weak-minded.

Even worse, allowing that oaf Hildr to cut me to the quick. Over my sister. My goddamn sister. Would that she were alive or dead, naught in limbo, that she would no longer prove my Achilles heel.

Adding insult to injury, pounding on my bedroom door in a state of fright in the middle of the night. And I allowed her to sleep in my bed whilst I stood watch. Like some pathetic au pair.

I clearly cannot trust myself.

I must get back to the waking world. These past several months in the Dreamlands have addled my brain. It’s entirely possible I have a brain fever, and might have to subject myself to a bloodletting session to alleviate the condition.

I can find no other cause for my current affliction. My sanity has been tested several times since taking up this infernal quest, and it is entirely possible I have had it tested too severely. These insipid displays of compassion, concern, caring – reprehensible.

I clearly must get ahold of myself.

Perhaps I do require a holiday. An extended holiday. One I shan’t ever return from.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

The man was tall and lean, stooping over slightly from what he called “a childhood case of polio.” His quick wit and intellect were sorely apparent when he spoke. His speech was clear and thoughtful, and always polite. He had a soft jawline with a protruding chin, highlighting his thin lips, which were pervasively drawn up in a lopsided smirk. His hairline was receding, making his tall brow more pronounced. He occasionally adjusted his spectacles as he spoke.

“I’ve worked it all out” he stated confidently.

I was holding his journal gingerly, carefully leafing through the handwritten entries. “Worked it out, you say?” I asked, making smoke monsters with my lit pipe as I skimmed the pages.

“My three laws. The premise that will undergird my novels.” He patiently explained. His smirk worked its way into a smile.

“Ah yes. Your ‘science fiction’ as you call it. Capitol Arthur. I am quite pleased with your progress. Pity I shan’t have the opportunity to read them for a few more centuries. I am sure I would have enjoyed them.”

I closed the journal and handed it back to him, puffing away vigorously.

“Keep it. It’s all up here now.” His smile widened, as he tapped his temple gently with his forefinger.

Tucking the journal under my arm, I stood from the park bench and extended my hand. “Thank you my good man. It has been a pleasure.”

He took my hand and used it to steady himself as he rose to his feet. Shaking my hand with an unusual amount of strength, he said “It has indeed. I have enjoyed our talks and all of your stories immensely. I do hope to see you again.” With that, he turned and walked back toward the cobblestone street. Over the red-rooved buildings I could see the tree line of the Enchanted Wood. He favored one leg slightly, making him almost lope as walked.

He paused and looked back. “Perhaps I’ll get you an advanced copy so you don’t have to wait.” He said with a playful grin. Then he loped back toward the forest.

I sat back down on the bench, refilling my pipe, and opened the journal to an ear-marked page. The following notes were scrawled clearly and with evident purpose:

1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur was going to be quite the novelist, I said to myself. Quite the novelist indeed.

My dear Nuala,

As we traveled on this black ship, and time wore on, I became aware of a progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off me. I had read of “Space”: at the back of my thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds.

I had not known how much it affected me till now – now that the very name “Space” seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which we swam. I could not call it “dead”; I felt life pouring into me from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? I had thought it barren: I now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes – and here, with how many more! No: “Space” was the wrong name.

I may yet find my way back to the womb of earth, to mother Geae, indeed even perhaps to witness her end of days and the grand apocalypse, but I shall do so with clarity of mind and enlightenment of soul. That singular thing even the gods themselves and these ignominious heathens cannot take from me.

I hope to see your empyrean face again very soon, my sweet sister.

Earnestly, Nuada

“Simply put in layman’s terms: Science is the pursuit of Truth. This pursuit is not blind, but informed through hypothesis and theory, trial and error, variance and proof. Neither is it effortless- in this pursuit, you must overcome many obstacles and setbacks. Therefore it must be courageous, this pursuit of ours, fearless even, for wherever this pursuit takes us, we must go, even if the path leads where angels fear to tread.

When you set out on this journey into the unknown, always remember – you are surrounded by ignorance, savagery and fanaticism. You live in a society where everyone thinks he/she knows about everything in the whole universe. If you find yourself among those intellectual idiots, then being good and humble may give rise to doubts in your mind about your own ideas. So, you must first learn to distinguish between real and shallow intellect. Then, as a self- preservation tactic, you need to let your pretense of arrogance grow as big as a Dinosaur, so that the fake intellectuals start to realize their true inferiority in front of you.

You must hiss at people who intend to undermine your individuality with their false pride and intellectual stupidity. You must frighten them away, lest they should do you harm. Act like you have a lot of venom inside you, but never inject them into anyone.

Do not listen to a single soul, but your own inner voice. Foster your will and make it as wild as possible. Dive deep into the mysterious fathoms of the universe and accomplish your purpose by hook or by crook, even if it means going down to the bottom of the ocean to meet your doom.”

Professor Craven Nathaniel Stirge, Esquire at a lecture to the General Assembly of Alienists, University of Syracuse, New York, 1856

I spoke those words. Delivered them to thundering applause. I was so magnificently confident back then. So steadfast in my belief that the sciences would banish the darkness of ignorance and that humanity would cease being such a rapacious mass of heathens and discover the truth.

A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, however.

The truth is that I am not on an expedition. This is no jolly search for academic knowledge. Quite the contrary, if anything I have discovered that the ancient tales of Old Ones and dark powers, of horrible creatures that populate mankind’s darkest nightmares, of superstitious religious allegory of heaven and hell, of fanciful legends of magical beings and artifacts – they are all quite real. Not fancy, but fact.

The samurai has acquired a cursed sword. The Valkyrie has a brother than can freely move about the time continuum. My assistant is beholden to a fiend from hell and the Angel of Death – as am I. The newest arrival has a broadsheet from six months in the future. And I am currently in possession of a sword that came straight out of a Lewis Carrol novel. And we are all on a grand quest to put an end to the Machiavellian machinations of one Randall Flagg to bring about the apocalypse well ahead of its ordained schedule. After we hand over the last piece of a key that he needs to do so, of course.

And I fully intend to have a tea party with my dead (dreaming?) sister when this whole sordid affair is over.

These are not wild imaginings. These are cold, hard facts. These statements, as preposterous as they may seem, are true. A wise man once said, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Of course I realize this all sounds like the ravings of a madman. But this is of no consequence to me. I shall persevere nonetheless on my course to oblivion.

But first, I must find a place for a certain pale mask in my collection. It must have an honored place, for I traveled far with the one to whom it was bequeathed. I had hoped he would see this grand adventure together with me to the end. Sadly he met an untimely demise.

On that note, I must also pen a letter to his nearest relations and inform them of his passing. Mauled by a grizzly bear, as I recall. Which is profoundly less unsettling then the truth of how he met his end, but there are truths best left hidden. There are a great many I shall take to my grave, which I fear may be sooner rather than later.

Now where is that infernal horned brute when I need another cup of coffee?

A corpse lies upon a white, stained sheet within the recesses of a military hospital. The corpse is small, the size of a child. What remains of the corpse’s features, however – the sharp angled lines, the bearded face – make it evident it was once a gnome. One would have to be astute to surmise that.

The skull had been split wide open, as if from immense pressure from inside the brain cavity. Brain matter and coagulated blood oozed out through every orifice and crack, the eyes having burst out of their sockets. The buzzing of flies belied the maggots that had set into the rotting tongue and throat.

A lean, wan figure stoops over the corpse.
The lean figure appears undernourished, ribs and spine protruding through stretched skin, noticeable even under the vestments it wears that drape over the figure like oversized funerary sheets. It holds a rosary tightly in its boney hand, muttering phrases in Latin as it traces patterns over the beads repetitively, oblivious to its surroundings, as if in a trance. As the figure’s voice becomes audible, the mutterings become more lucid.

“Proverbs 27:22 saist ‘Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.’ You were such a fool, D. P. But an honest fool you were to the end.

Only a fool says in his heart
There is no Creator, no King of kings,
Only mules would dare to bray
These lethal mutterings.
Over darkened minds as these
The Darkness bears full sway,
Fruitless, yet, bearing fruit,
In their fell, destructive way.
Sterile, though proliferate,
A filthy progeny sees the day,
When Evil, Thought and Action mate:
Breeding sin, rebels and decay.
The blackest deeds and foul ideals,
Multiply throughout the earth,
Through deadened, lifeless, braying souls,
The Darkness labours and gives birth.
Taking the Lord’s abundant gifts
And rotting them to the core,
They dress their dish and serve it out
Foul seeds to infect thousands more.
‘The Tree of Life is dead!’ they cry,
‘And that of Knowledge not enough,
Let us glut on the ashen apples
Of Sodom and Gomorrah.’

Have pity on Thy children, Lord,
Left sorrowing on this earth,
While fools and all their kindred
Cast shadows with their murk,
And to the dwindling wise,
They toss their heads and wryly smirk.
The world daily grinds to dust
Virtue’s fair unicorns,
Rather, it would now beget
Vice’s mutant manticores.
Wisdom crushed, our joy is gone,
Buried under anxious fears
For lost rights and freedoms,
We shed many bitter tears.
Death is life, Life is no more,
Humanity buried in a tomb,
In a fatal prenatal world
Where tiny flowers
Are ripped from the womb,
Discarded, thrown away,
Inconvenient lives
That barely bloomed.
Our elders fare no better,
Their wisdom unwanted by and by,
Boarded out to end their days,
And forsaken are left to die.
Only the youthful and the useful,
In this capital age prosper and fly.
Yet, they too are quickly strangled,
Before their future plans are met,
Professions legally pre-enslaved
Held bound by mounting debt.
Our leaders all harangue for peace
Yet perpetrate the horror,
Of economic greed shored up
Through manufactured war.
Our armies now welter
In foreign civilian gore.
How many of our kin are slain
For hollow martial honour?
As if we could forget, ignore,
The scourge of wealth and power,
Alas, victors are rarely tried
For their woeful crimes of war.

No more!
Crimes are legion,
The deeds of devil-spawn!
What has happened to the souls
Your Divine Image was minted on?
They are now recast:
Crooked coins of Caesar and
The Whore of Babylon.
How often mankind shuts its ears
To Your music celestial,
Mankind would rather march
To the anthems of Hell.
If humanity cannot be reclaimed
By Your Mercy and great Love
Deservedly we should be struck
By Vengeance from above.
Many dread the Final Day,
And the Crack of Doom
For others the Apocalypse
Will never come too soon.
‘Lift up your heads, be glad’,
Fools shall bray no more
For at last the Master comes
To thresh His threshing floor.

The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.

The truth is that humanity is a vile stain upon creation, and the merciless Old Ones that I have born witness to shall wipe the stain clean, and the blood from the slaughter shall runneth like wine from the pressing of the grapes of their wrath.

Isaiah 6 saith: ‘I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone…for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’

Woe be to us all when that inevitable day arrives.”

“Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.”
When I was young I would hear people say this. I used to believe that it was a sword they had been talking about but now I see it was a person’s soul. The people of my clan believe in The great Phoenix lady Suzaku. However, I never really believed in the davin beings until now. For here I am traveling and exploring things way beyond my own power constantly going unconscious over and over. I’ve lost my eyes and had them restored, I’ve broken my arm, suffered burns to my whole body, and much more but I feel as if something wants me to live. Ever since I saw that thing, even tho I was blind, I had to accept the fact that gods might be real. So does that mean lady Suzaku is watching over me? If so then why look out for me? Why save me only to see me go down again? Lady Suzaku I’m not sure to what end you want me live but I will keep going forward. I will see the end of what I have started. I will use all that has happened to me to grow stronger. I will become someone strong enough to stand and lead my people. But I suppose that I should ask the others to start calling me by my real name. The name I was given and forced hide not the name I was forced to take for the sake of my people. Why do I feel like that prick is going to have a field day with this.

“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds…”
—Algernon Blackwood

Balderdash. Or so I thought. But I’ve seen it, been there, in my waking dreams. Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror – the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration.

I alone comprehend the gravity of it. The magnitude of it. The truth of it. My companions are entirely imbecilic, drifting along, lost amidst their blissful and willful ignorance. This is what I’ve come to believe is best however. Let them believe they are heroes. It shall make the end painless for them, a mercy. Mercy.

Oh dear Mercy Lee, my Lady Knight Errant. Would that you were here to witness the sublime.

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see
Are the dreams all made solid
Are the dreams all made real

All of the buildings, all of those cars
Were once just a dream
In somebody’s head

She pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
She pictures a soul
With no leak at the seam

Lets take the boat out
Wait until darkness
Let’s take the boat out
Wait until darkness comes

Nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
Nowhere in the suburbs
In the cold light of day

There in the midst of it so alive and alone
Words support like bone

Dreaming of mercy st.
Wear your inside out
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy(‘s arms again
Dreaming of mercy st.
’Swear they moved that sign
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy’s arms

Pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
Tugging at the darkness, word upon word

Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
To the priest-he’s the doctor
He can handle the shocks

Dreaming of the tenderness-the tremble in the hips
Of kissing Mary’s lips

Dreaming of mercy st.
Wear your insides out
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy’s arms again
Dreaming of mercy st.
‘Swear they moved that sign
Looking for mercy
In your daddy’s arms

Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy

Anne, with her father is out in the boat
Riding the water
Riding the waves on the sea

My dearest Liddell Alice,

I thought I sought you in vain. So it went on for months. Many times It occurred to me I should simply take a sabbatical from my current quest and employ all my considerable skill as a detective to find you, but the horrible notion that I may simply find your remains — the alternative seemed too much to bare. I was most unwilling to be robbed of you again, and also afraid of risking the loss of any remainder of my tenuous sanity.

But I have found you, sweet child of mine. Sweet sweet sister. I shall stop at nothing to ensure your safety, though all the hosts of heaven and the vile hordes of hell stand against it. I shall climb the tallest mount and appeal to the very gods themselves for your return.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Your loving brother, Duada.