Post by Cannibal Monkey on May 13, 2004 11:19:37 GMT -5
It was mine now. After long years of searching, I had it and the secrets it possessed within my grasp.
I had acquired it at an "Auction of Oddities, Old and New" (lot number 387) against fierce competition. Obviously I was not alone in my quest for obscure lore. Still, after none of my opponents could match my offer, it had come to me.
It really was not much to look at. Who would have thought that such an item of power would look so innocent to the untrained eye. It was a mere stack of paper, attached to a cardboard binder with large, heavy duty staples. Half a ream of hand-scrawled knowledge (annotated in the margins, naturally), seemingly dashed off by a madman. But I knew he was not mad. The "Almagest Uncia" was penned by one who knew the truth... and beyond it.
That night, my frantic study began. Even as a child I had an interest in the unusual and unexplainable. Age had simply refined my desire to the obscure, to this - the height of the arcane. So imagine, if you will, my excitement as I first opened that ragged cover to gaze upon the pearls within... Pleasure beyond words.
If what I read was true, which is a conclusion I find more and more definite as I think upon it further, then we are all doomed. The predicitons - no, certainties - contained within the tome speak of an end time, when the constellations align and monstrous beings take stride. A time when the elder ones arise, a time of anarchy and, ultimately, the extinction of our kind. For it will be a time of madness, in which civilisations will crumble.
They will not allow me out of my cell now. They think I am insane but I too see clearly now. Clearer than they ever will. Still my nights' dreams are haunted by the shapes of beyond, out of sight but getting clearer as my mind comprehends more and more. Soon they will become clear...
But I do not want to see them.
I had acquired it at an "Auction of Oddities, Old and New" (lot number 387) against fierce competition. Obviously I was not alone in my quest for obscure lore. Still, after none of my opponents could match my offer, it had come to me.
It really was not much to look at. Who would have thought that such an item of power would look so innocent to the untrained eye. It was a mere stack of paper, attached to a cardboard binder with large, heavy duty staples. Half a ream of hand-scrawled knowledge (annotated in the margins, naturally), seemingly dashed off by a madman. But I knew he was not mad. The "Almagest Uncia" was penned by one who knew the truth... and beyond it.
That night, my frantic study began. Even as a child I had an interest in the unusual and unexplainable. Age had simply refined my desire to the obscure, to this - the height of the arcane. So imagine, if you will, my excitement as I first opened that ragged cover to gaze upon the pearls within... Pleasure beyond words.
If what I read was true, which is a conclusion I find more and more definite as I think upon it further, then we are all doomed. The predicitons - no, certainties - contained within the tome speak of an end time, when the constellations align and monstrous beings take stride. A time when the elder ones arise, a time of anarchy and, ultimately, the extinction of our kind. For it will be a time of madness, in which civilisations will crumble.
They will not allow me out of my cell now. They think I am insane but I too see clearly now. Clearer than they ever will. Still my nights' dreams are haunted by the shapes of beyond, out of sight but getting clearer as my mind comprehends more and more. Soon they will become clear...
But I do not want to see them.