Oh what a find it was. Up topside, looking down through the depths with radar and other amazing wonders of technology, the team had found what appeared to be the ruins of something truly massive, and so very near the surface. A great find, a wonderful find, the scientists drew straws and one lucky bastard, Dr. Foster, had been the one chosen to don the brass suit, and sink down into the cold depths to find what treasures lay below.

The light on his helmet helped illuminate the gloom, some thousand feet from the surface, and he walked the bottom of the risen floor, upon old stone and barnacle-rich statues, great statues of long since past gods. Who would have thought such wonders could be found just off the coast of Wales, what joys could be found? Was this lost Avalon? Atlantis? Something older? The script was faded and old upon one great pillar, and as he walked, he explored.

High above, the ship twisted and lurched, and then shuddered from great impacts, and lurched, as great tears ripped through the iron sides, while below, the good doctor did not pay attention to the twelve shadows that rose over head, towards the surface. Nor did he see the malevolent glow of a great pair of eyes or the maw stretching wide coming up behind...

I know not what brings me more terror. That when I read that book, that thrice damned book accursed of all that is holy and natural, that I saw visions of hell that were beyond the cruelties of all the many demons fallen from gods grace, or that I, standing in that tormented plane beyond sight and sound and reason, that in the cacophony of weeping gods I heard a voice asking me, clear as day and as gentle as my grandfather would ask, a question.

"You should not be here, little one."

What terrifies me most, not that I stood in that realm of madness, that I gazed upon the true sight of the sun and saw, under green skies and orange glow, the sun was but the writhing mass of gods own afterbirth, the squamous birth of a dragon yet to hatch from a molten egg, but that the man in yellow and wearing a mask that moved, looked on me through hollow eyes, and asked with concern, why I was there. That I, in a place that god would fear to tread, that this creature asked why I had crossed over and stood on the very edge of sanity, and beyond it.

"You should not be here, young one."

And he held to me a medalion, made of cool metal and forged by no hands human, and touched it to my brow, sending me back. And now, staring at the mirror, gazing on the scar left in its wake, I must ask, is it more terrible to gaze upon the realm of madness, or find something who cared to send you back?

For even now, I stare at the sun, and scream, knowing what it is.

Under the guidance of my professor, who I trusted immensely, I let him put me into a hypnotic trance with the strange amulet that he had found in the old journeys to the ruins of fabled Canaan. I trusted the old man, wise in his years, and I opened my thoughts to let him explore, while gazing longingly upon the open eye of the strange five-sided star.

I remember falling into the star, and seeing the eye flare open to gaze at me. The world had become frozen in mid swing, and I rose up to touch the marking, as the world fell away and I gazed unsteadily into a gray world. The eye gazed upon me, on the hide of a great chittenous beast, who spoke of words and sounds that were a cold spike across my nerves.

I stood in the gray planes, and I looked upon the insectine face of the keeper of the eye, the eye upon his back, and he gazed at me, seeing me with neither contempt nor wonder, but a simple, blank acceptance of what I was, and who I was, and he gazed through me, reading every part of my soul, laid bare before him.

A thousand worshipers, a thousand students lay knelt at his feet, as he rose above the multitude of people, human, and some far less and far more. He spoke again in the tongue, the tongue of Canaan, and lectured his students upon matters that I did not know or comprehend. In this gray place, of three moons and a brightness without sun, the Knower spoke, and taught lessons far beyond my kenning. He gestured a hand for me to join them, and I did, taking up a robe brought to me, and for a thousand years I knelt, and listened to him speak, my mind brought open to wonders and terrors and revelations...

And then I knew I was ready, as I stood, and approached the great eye again, and I bowed my head in thanks to my Master, the Knower, and obeyed his command to bring others. My head swam with all I knew, like a pitcher filled with two gallons to the one it was meant to hold. Knowledge spilled from my lips like blood, as I held fast onto the gaze of the eye.

I looked away from his face, a face touched with a moment of compassion, and then to the eye, which blinked once and cast me back to strange colors.

"What did you see?" The professor asked me, as he shook me, his voice a froth, of wanton need to know. I shook, I trembled, and I retched as I was forced to breath again. "Tell me! Tell me what you saw! Tell me what He knows!"

I gazed upon my professor, and shook my head slowly, and spoke not a word to him. I said little, as I walked away to his furious shouts, and spoke not a word to any again.  For what had been shown, was too beautiful to speak, and too horrible to behold...

"Yami, you need to paint today..."

She was a good child. She obeyed her parents and honored her elders, but always she was afraid to paint. It was not that she was not talented - oh no, she was amongst the most gifted of all of the children of Edo, and she could paint with a flourish that Masters would weep at. Her works were beautiful, the flesh of her dreamed images rippled like they were drawn out of movement to pose for her. She drew with one single brush, with simple paints, but she was the best any had seen.

But her pictures had grown steadily darker, and she no longer drew happy things. She saw things in the pageswatched them, always felt the whisper of the creatures calling to her mind. And one such thing kept asking to be painted.

She knew she should not, but she was a good child, and she knew that Mr. Eddisc would not hurt her, even as terrible as he was. She sat, sitting in chair, and she raised her brush to the canvas, and began to give Mr. Eddisc shape, she painted him and let the ink run and dry upon the canvas.

His terrible maw fell open and his eyes gleamed at her from beyond the portrait, and she felt a pained smile touch her face. She did not want to give this one shape, but, she had to. And she continued to drag the soft brush down, to mark her name upon the edge, to give final breath to her work.

She was a good child, even as Mr. Eddisc reached out from the canvas, and smeared her cheek with a touch of paint. She had painted her greatest piece. But he asked her to draw again.

He had so many friends who wanted to come and meet her...

The Devourer...

Oh of what hells I hath seen in the moments of my dreams, that take upon them the sigil of our heavenly father, of what things I have seen in the wretched moments, where reality wavers likened to the ocean and nothing is as it seems, oh what terrors I have glimpsed, upon the sky without the glory of the sun, what terrors I have witnessed and horrors overrun.

Six times six years have I spent in the meditations of which the order of the white rose is best known, but for each year have I seen another vision of the future yet untold, and every time I watch the candle burn itself low I am witness to things I pray to the gods "do not let me behold!"

I have witnessed the far planes of reality beyond the ken of allmighty God, and I have seen the things that walk the lands of long forgotten Nod, for there lay the great maw of the devourer his body stained with blood of saints, in time that have not come but for truth I know for which I have saw'd!

Oh what blasphemies must I dream that the angels bare to me the horrors of a hundred thousand madmen, what crimes must I have commit'd under the thought I had been working the hand of the Lord!  Oh woe upon woe are heaped upon me in the terrible shallow depths of my mind, that I would serve the pennance for all the sins Babylon herself hath whore'd!

Woe, woe, woe again I say, for what I see beyond the vale and scream aloud in the sacred silence of my meditations, for I see the face of ba'al Himself come to steal my soul and not even the saints could save me with all of their benedictions!

Woe.  Do not come this path I have taken, for hubris did I spend in meditation upon things unholy, for I dared ask to be shown the truth, and it has taken the whole of me...