The Beginning

The day was cold and biting for most things, those that could be said to be living, despite the fire that burnt furiously in the middle of the clearing in the forest. The stars were drowned out by the intense light thrown up from the blazing glory of the flames and even the full moon struggled to make itself seen in the clear night sky. To the perceptions of the people circumambulating around the heat, the night was pitch dark beyond the ring of light. Little did they know what would be in store for them on that cold, winter's night.

Voices rose into the wind with the smoke from a myriad of trees that gave themselves into the fire, along with no small number of small animals that had been unfortunate enough to be found by cultists over the previous weeks leading up to this ceremony. Reports would circulate for weeks after of eerie animal cries echoing through the valley. The chanting, something like those ancient Christian monks who wailed and waned in voices that were supposed to sound something better than mewling dogs, increased in tempo and in volume as the people worked themselves up into increasing throes of religious ecstasy. They began to dance on their journey around the bonfire, some even daring to caress the flames with hands that did not seem to burn. One or two flinched from the pain, gaining no kudos from the failed attempt to show off their assumed spiritual prowess. I would wager that Carter would have scoffed at their obviously flawed attempts. If he wouldn't have scoffed, he surely should have.

Consciousness was burgeoning and visual perceptions began to waveringly intrude on the darkness. Humanoid forms began to appear and vanish, waving and fluctuating in and out of conscious awareness with rising frequency, to the point that nausea threatened to overcome the stomach. It was at the point I remembered that I had no stomach and this sensation was nought but an illusion. As I struggled to pin-point individual forms, my own solidity increased but not in some crude material way. There was a sense of developing, deepening and ranging identity. The formless was becoming form. The essence was becoming a singularity of being. The spiritual was becoming manifest in material form, though not in the sense of these fleshlings, as I have since come to refer to them.

Consciousness was torn and stretched until breaking point, the slumber of aeons uncountable wrenched from my mental grasp and myself thrust into this awakening nightmare of material reality for which I was neither desirous nor willing. Rage that made the fire seem a sparkler at Guy Fawkes Night swelled and burnt in my soul. Burning that scars, burning that consumes, burning that enervates with furious rage and deliberate vengeance...this I knew for the first time.

The so-called High Priest, or the one I guessed to be so, shrieked at first in horror and then in agonising pain. Flaming tentacles reminiscent of the Great Old One, Cthulhu, flickered out and reach for his robes. Soon flames had wrapped themselves about his body and reached into his mouth, eyes, nostrils and any other orifice that could be found and forced open. He screamed and squealed as the flames reached into his body and burnt him from within; flesh to ashes and ashes to dust. My fury was hardly sated and my urge to destroy was further awakened and fueled.

Three souls found themselves waving their hands in the flames, testing their resolve and providing a delicious opportunity. Reaching out, spiritual vines unseen, forces they could not see or understand tore them from their feet and dragged them into the midst of the conflagration. A female howled in agony until she was silenced with a horn through her throat, the delectable scent of boiling blood rising into the air. The two male fleshlings fared no better, though they howled a lot more for much less pain.

Two humanoid forms had the sense to flee and I decided to release them to their fear and let them go. I have since learnt that a people called the Vikings once allowed people to live so that they would spread the terrible news. It pleases me that some have a measure of intelligence among this cursed race. So two lived from around twenty; eighteen fuelling the fire of vengeance raged that winter's night.

Thus did I come into this plane and dimension, full of rage and full fury. Thus was a new era of the Outer Gods ushered in while the so-called "mighty" Great Old Ones continued their dreams or whatever they do.