When the Stars are Right, Chapter II.

Nyarlethotep Awakens

Three figures in tattered brown cloaks mount the steep and shattered steps to a forbidding

stone temple that squats atop a pyramid overgrown in primordial jungle. The sea, a short walk

away, crashes, and a strong wild wind begins to reach in toward the land, and the tangle of trees

as old as man creaks and groans beneath its influence. The figures come to the top of the stairs

and halt. One of them, the leader, the one in the middle, steps out ahead and begins to whisper.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh K’Tulu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Before them is a stone crypt, all gray stone with no inscription or engraving of any kind,

old beyond count of years. From within his cloak the speaker draws forth a dagger with a black

obsidian blade, one that was handed down since dawns were young and creatures known no

more were in the earth. The blade was carved on a very special day by long dead hands, and it

has awaited this other very special day since that moment, and has known no other use or intent

in all that span of time. Crazed dreams have informed them and brought them hance, and a great

strong pull has been felt from the right place, a place far out to sea known only to these brethren

where a drowned city sleeps, and a mad god dreams.

The figure speaks again: Come forth, Holiness, I bid you with this blood.

With that, the speaker slashes open a left hand and lays the gash upon the lid of the

sarcophagus. The blood seeps into the stone, and spreads slowly into its surface, to reveal a

network of veins not unlike human veins, and then it begins to split asunder, the stone itself
cracking and crazing and falling away, every vein in the stone becoming a fissure, until the stone

is riven completely away, and the figure of a man, reposing inside the mausoleum is revealed.

Nyarlethotep, come forth.

Far out to sea, they again feel a violent telepathic ripple as their Dread and Sleeping

Master struggles to awaken. Here, in this temple, lies the one who must call him forth. The priest

slashes his other hand and holds it to the stone that is sundering and splitting to reveal the being

that sleeps within. The three begin to chant louder now, and their mutterings grow stranger,

blasphemous and obscene to all but the handful of adherents to their darkest of faiths.

Suddenly, from the ancient flesh, there is a stirring, and the regal corpse that last walked

the earth when the first of the Pharaohs arose upon the Nile, slowly moves. The other priests

slash their hands now, adding their blood and their mutterings to the horror that unfolds, eagerly

giving their life’s blood to awaken their Holy Father of the Cult of the Elder Gods. The tall form

seems to grow and rejuvenate beneath their ministrations; once again, there is movement, and at

last, the figure in the shattered tomb arises, almost lithely, a great, tall man with the darkest of

skin and flashing eyes, a man not a man, who fell from the sky in a long gone age.

The priests bow in supplication, and mutter their holiest of prayers in welcome.

Nyarlethotep is risen.

Great Nyarlethotep, spawn of the eons, stands upon a rocky outcropping overlooking the

jungle. He has donned purple robes and a great jeweled necklace of a strange gold-like metal.

His skin as dark and glistening as a Zulu warrior’s, his eyes great glowering orbs, his bearing

that of a man of noblest blood. His knowing is infinite, and reaches out to the starry heights and

brooding deeps, and he is listening, with a great clairvoyant searching, ceaselessly inspecting the
cold and ghostly nether reaches for a sign. He whispers entreaties in a dozen dead tongues, words

that are more than words, his arms outstretched, luminous eyes wide, imploring. For hours he

stands with almost no movement, save the muttering beneath his breath of these dead words, and

then, something freezes his gaunt and kingly frame, and the muttering ceases. He listens to that

which only he can hear. Then, he mutters back to the outer dark:

“I, Nyarlethotep, serve you eternally, O Dread One.”

He breathes now, much like a man, and now he turns his ancient face that grows younger

by the hour to the tattered priest that awaits his commands.

“I will need the Black Book of the Mad Arab. The Necronomicon. Bring it to me, if you

must scour the world for it.”

The priest bows and scurries away, and Nyarlethotep turns once again to gaze into the

darkness, and far beyond, outward, into the glowing orbs of deepest space, and inward, into deep

grinning horrors, that he alone can see. Above, in the night, the deathlike grin of the stars is mad

and cold and strange.