by Donald Tyson
If you should pass in soul flight through the portal of Leng, you will find your mind within the body of one of its inhabitants, with full power to control that creature as you see fit, and with understanding of its language and the requirements of its life. In this vessel you may wander where you will and learn all that is of interest concerning this place and its ancient history, for Leng is one of the oldest regions of our world, and has remained undisturbed by the cataclysms that at long intervals of time reshape the land and redefine the outline of the seas. It is a misfortune to enter the body of an infant, for the immaturity of the form limits the gathering of information. The body of a shaman, protected by the spirit of the winged hound that is indentured to his soul, cannot be entered; nor can the body of a monk be occupied, for those who dwell within the monastery are guarded by potent charms.
A creature of the depths related an amusing tale concerning a traveler to Leng. The man was a wizard who lived centuries prior to the present age. He passed through the portal and found himself within the form of an infant girl, just as a shaman and his apprentice were placing the child in a cauldron of boiling water. Powerless to resist due to the smallness of his host body, he suffered all the torments of death; more than this, his consciousness remained locked in the flesh of the infant after it was cooked, and he was forced to endure the indignity of being cut apart and consumed piece by piece. Such are the hazards inherent in the practice of wizardry.
In the mornings after a rain, when the mist hangs close to the grasslands and the sun barely glows above the low lines of slate-colored clouds that hug the horizon, the form of a great city with vast towers and oblong habitations of stone may be seen in mirage; for no matter how clear the lineaments of the city, which at times is visible in great fineness of detail, it invariably wavers and vanishes when approached. The shamans tell that it is the city of the Elder Things that once rose where Leng now is, but over the passing of aeons moved with the movements of the earth itself to some distant place far to the south. It is their belief that the ground upon which we walk is not fixed, but floats upon the depths of the sea, and that the winds of ages blow the land across the sea, so that our world is forever rearranged, and what was north becomes south, and what was east becomes west.
The common people of Leng worship the shamans, but the shamans worship Yog-Sothoth, the master of the portals who is at oneness with all time and space, and who manifests as a conflux of the spheres of the heavens, glowing with all colors simultaneously. Learn wisdom and worship Yog-Sothoth if you would transcend the limits of distance and the barrier of time, and would be a far traveler in the myriad of worlds; worship him if you would defy death itself and live beyond your allotted years, for Yog-Sothoth holds the keys to all the gates, even the gate of death. The shamans adore him with the following prayer that can only imperfectly be rendered into our tongue:
“Aieei-k’tay! Heed my cry, Yog-Sothoth, by your secret name I adore thee, by your true name I offer obeisance in return for your sufferance, the utterance of which is death. On my knees I beg the gift of slavery in your service, O Herder of Ages. Accept my offering of blood, flesh, and bone, and the torment of this soul that I have bound for your pleasure. Set free the gates, Lord of Transitions, that my voice may spread the glory of your greatness, borne upon the wings of the k’tay that guards the descent of my fathers. I acknowledge your supremacy and bear witness of your greatness in the hall of reckoning beyond the stars. Aieei-k’tay, Yog-Sothoth, aieei-k’tay.”
he City of Heights, as it may be called, is the original home of the Elder Race, more ancient even than the Old Ones, who traveled to our world long before the creation of man. Here they erected a new city in imitation of that familiar place, and this second home may still be seen in its ghostly outlines in the mists on the plateau of Leng. As monumental as it appears to human eyes, it is but a low and unworthy shadow of the original, which shimmers beneath the heat of three suns on their distant world. Whether this place can be reached in the body is unknown, although some have said that by means of certain angles that cut channels through the substance of space itself, and by the careful preparation of the flesh with herbal concoctions, travel is to be had to this distant world without recourse to soul flight; but whether a living man could survive such a flight can only be demonstrated by the attempt.
The bodies of the Elder Ones appear awkward and unnatural to our perceptions, yet they move with rapidity on their five lower limbs with splayed feet triangular in shape. Their gray trunks are leathery and hard to the touch, and are ribbed with vertical ridges. From them extend flexible arms that are much like the branches of a tree. Between the ridges expand translucent gray wings that open from the bottom to the top like a fan. They enable flight both through air and the emptiness between the stars, and their rhythmic beatings speed the progress of these creatures under water. At times the inhabitants open them to the rays of their suns, to enjoy the warmth.
The eyesight of these monsters is excellent, but because it permits seeing both before and behind, to which men are unaccustomed, it requires a period of acclimatization before it may be used to good effect. The immediate impression is that of one image laid on top of another, as though a painter had executed a second work of art directly on top of the first in such a way that both could be seen. After a short while this disorientation of the eyes passes, and they serve as admirable instruments with which to appreciate the beauty of the city.
Although the City of Heights has no proper name recognized by our race, it might well be called the city of colors, so resplendent is the light of this world. The largest sun is red, that of middle size yellow, and the smallest, which is scarcely bigger than Venus at her nearest approach, is a blazing bluish-white that cannot be looked upon without the eyes of the inhabitants becoming dazzled. These three colors interact without being blended, so that one moment the sky is pink, the next blue, the next a delicate shade of green, and so on, changing with rapidity from one hue to the next, and making all that is seen in the city below seem to dance and flicker with the reflected rays of finely cut jewels.
The bright towers are tall beyond the power of the mind to comprehend, for their tops are set within the clouds, yet from a distance they do not appear so high, for they are not slender spires such as we are accustomed to make when we wish to project a building into the heavens, but of massive thickness and square corners. So finely set are the stones, these soaring artificial mountains appear to be carved from single blocks. Their uncivil shapes defy the earth, for some are wider at the tops than at their bases, and have immense flat surfaces upon which the Elder Ones promenade and converse with one another in their shrill piping voices that sound much as do our flutes.
They excel in pictorial representation, but delight most in depicting their own forms, as though their very shape were to them a holy thing; or that by reproducing it in their paintings and carvings they could draw assurance from it as from something perfect in an imperfect universe. Everywhere it adorns their walls, their fountains, even the balustrades of their high balconies, for they love the heights and seldom venture into the shadows between the bases of their buildings, or into the dense jungle that lies at the borders of this vast city. It may be for this reason that it has acquired the title City of Heights among the deep dwellers of our world and the few men who converse with them.
Paintings in their numerous galleries show their coming to our world when both its dry surface and its seas were still devoid of life, so that not a blade of grass grew upon the lands and no fish swam in the waters. They are equally at home in water or air, and took their initial abode upon our world under the waves as a living place less hostile to their flesh than the harsh rays of our sun, which in that ancient time was hotter and more burning. It was this very harshness of the sun that prevented the growth of life on the rocks. Not that our sun is brighter than the three suns of their heavens, but as they say in conversation between themselves while gazing at images of our world, because our
higher zone of air lacked a barrier to the rays that weakens their force.
To make the oceans more pleasant, the Elder Ones created many types of living things. When long aeons had passed, and our air became thicker, plants began to grow upon the rocks, and later still, insects crawled and flew among them. The Elder Ones emerged from the waves and built their new city, where Leng now resides beyond the mountains of the east. For a period of time much greater than the existence of our race, they lived untroubled, pursuing their studies and creations, for they are curious creatures who seek to know all the mysteries of the worlds they have opened.
Then came the armies of Cthulhu that drove them back into the seas and destroyed their city. After the passage of a span of time that cannot be measured by our arithmeticians, since there is no word for so large a number of years, the Elder Ones again emerged from the depths and built a new city upon the ruined foundation of the old, in the land that lies at the southernmost extremity of our world; for over time this land had floated upon the great subterranean ocean from the north to the south. Here they remained until the coming of the ice, when they again returned to the sea.
All these matters are to be gathered from their paintings and their speech with each other, but not easily, for the bodies of the Elder Ones cannot be controlled as can the bodies of most other vessels. They do not appear to resist the effort to make them walk this way or that, but merely to be unaware of it; however, from certain amused remarks that pass between them, it is likely that they know when they are inhabited by a visiting soul traveler, but that this occurrence is of so little importance that they choose to ignore it.
Much of their time is expended in intellectual discussion, for their minds are keener than those of any other living being attainable through the portals. Yet they also delight in describing among themselves various bloody tortures inflicted on several kinds of living things bred expressly for this purpose. Torture is to them a form of high art and their chief recreation. The creatures who suffer to amuse them are bred to enhance their sensitivity to pain, so that their writhings are more strenuous. The quality of the artistry and the entertainment, for it is both, is determined by how severe it can be made without cutting short the life of the performer.
A blasphemous thing must be written, the utterance of which would cause outrage and death in both the lands of the Prophet and those of the Cross. It is whispered that the Elder Ones, who were skilled in the making of all manner of things both inert and living, are the creators of mankind. They made numerous forms of life to fill up the barren lands of our world, and we were only one among many. Why they created us is unknown to our scholars, nor has it been heard uttered by the Elder Ones, but it should be considered that when they refer to mankind in their conversations it is always with a kind of piping laughter, as though the mere mention of our name amuses them. It is perhaps no accident that in our anatomy the organs of reproduction are combined with the organs of excretion, whereas these organs are widely separated on the bodies of the Elder Ones.
he city of R’lyeh occupies a series of wide terraces on the slopes of a mountain, deep beneath a great ocean that lies far to the south off the coast of Cathay. Since these waters are unknown to the trading ships of all nations, the precise placement of this mountain cannot be pointed to on any mariner’s chart. In the distant past, long before the creation of our race, great Cthulhu came with his warriors, servants, and many children, and he built the city on the heights overlooking a fertile island as a fortified place where they could dwell in security from their enemies. In construction it resembles a fortress, with each terrace guarded by walls a hundred paces thick. When the island sank into the depths, R’lyeh was submerged together with its inhabitants and their lord.
So say the scattered and solitary scholars of this god in our own age, when they are compelled to reveal the secrets of their studies. It is no easy matter to cause them to speak of these things, for they have no fear of death; however, there are worse torments than the end of the flesh, and life can be the greater evil. Though they respect the power of dead Cthulhu who lies dreaming, they have no wish to emulate his fate, nor to feel the worms and beetles gnaw at their still-sentient corpse; unlike the flesh of the god, their flesh would not renew itself.
R’lyeh is built of rock, and is of vast dimensions, though it did not soar into the air as did the city of the Elder Race that inhabited our world before the coming of the Old Ones, but held close to the earth. In shape its dwellings resemble great blocks stacked like the playthings of a child. The green stones of which they were built are of a size too massive to be moved even by the skills of the Egyptians, yet they are so perfectly set that the blade of a dagger cannot be inserted between them. On the peak of the mountain stands a single stone with squared corners, an obelisk so large that it would dwarf the greatest pyramid of the Nile. Nor is it a slender column, but a thick block with four vertical sides that are covered over their surfaces with carven symbols, the pictorial writing of the Old Ones.
Beneath the obelisk, in a cavern cut into the rock of the mountain, Cthulhu himself is fabled to lie in his tomb. His condition cannot be described by any word in the languages of man, but in the tongue of the Old Ones he is said to be fhtagn, which means variously meditating, sleeping, or dreaming. His body is not formed of common sinews, bones, and muscles, but is made of a gelatinous substance similar to bone marrow that heals itself when it suffers violence, and so remains unaffected by the passage of time.
It is whispered that in the dimness of the past, when men were yet like beasts and ran naked, the god foresaw the coming of a time when the stars would conspire with their rays to destroy him and the other lords of the Old Ones who had traveled through space to our world. In his wisdom he devised a protection from the noxious rays of the stars that necessitated a state of torpor resembling deep sleep, save that no life remained in his gargantuan body, only an unquenchable intelligence that planned and waited and dreamed for when the stars would work their way around in their turnings, and once more would become wholesome for his race.
With the strength of his mind alone he guided the progress of humanity, and selected groups of men and women to be his adopted children. He was their tomasuk, a word in the language of the Old Ones that means warrior lord to those who owed him fealty. They served him with their lives. Their final purpose is to release Cthulhu from his tomb when the stars have moved sufficiently in the heavens to dispel the danger to his waking continuance; for he cannot awaken himself, but must be awakened from his sleep. Then, so states the lore, great Cthulhu will open the gates to the other Old Ones and they shall return to rule the world, as they did in ancient times, after casting the Elder Race into the sea, and men will serve them as their slaves.
While the island of R’lyeh remained above the waves of the eastern ocean, it was an easy matter for Cthulhu to control the actions of his myriads of worshippers with only the power of his dreaming mind; but a great cataclysm took place, and the island sank beneath the sea, so that not even the top of the god’s titanic monument pressed its head above the tides. The stars revolved in their courses; the aeons came and went; Cthulhu remained unwakened in his tomb, for the vastness of water pressing upon the sealed doors of his house obstructed his mind so that his human worshippers no longer heard the voice of their god, nor could they have reached his tomb in the depths even had he called them. As ages passed they forgot the adoration of the mighty shaker of mountains, yet still they remain his servants.
So is told the legend of Cthulhu by those who dwell in caves in the Empty Space. Yet the fate of the god is not sealed, for it is their belief that at times the city of R’lyeh rises above the waters of the sea, for what has sunk can also rise. Should this ascent of R’lyeh occur when the stars are right, it is asserted that Cthulhu will summon his human servants with the power of his thoughts, and they will open the doors of his house and release him once more into our world.
These matters would not be known to a visitor
to R’lyeh who traveled there by soul flight through the portal in the starlit chamber beneath Irem. He would emerge in darkness and cold, with the crushing weight of the ocean upon his host vessel, which can only be some creature of the depths, for the ancient inhabitants of R’lyeh are all dust or lie sleeping in their tombs. There is no one in the shadowy and water-filled streets with whom to converse, only crawling things that have never seen the sun and deep-diving ocean beasts such as the vast leviathan.
Most common among the gargantuan stones of the city are tentacled creatures with one great eye in their heads and beaks for mouths. They are not native to our world but were created by the Old Ones to resemble the beasts of the world they left behind; they have no language, and their intelligence is low and cunning, but their eyes are large enough to see in the dimness of the ocean bottom, and their soft bodies can fit through small spaces, making them useful as aids in exploring the city.
Swim upward through the depths over the battlements of the successive terraces of the city, taking care not to become lost amid the strange angles of the stones, until you reach the base of the great obelisk on the crown of the mountain. There you will find a door like unto no door seen by the eyes of man, made of a metal that resembles tarnished bronze and has almost the look of stone. All across its surface are strange markings that hurt the mind, so that it is impossible to remember their shapes to copy them after returning through the soul portal. The door is sealed, and like as not will remain shut until the end of time, for there is no intelligent being to heed the call of Cthulhu to open it through the endless barrier of the sea.