Later they flew me up to my own private chamber atop a strangely shaped tower. They even brought in a captive island girl to accompany me in my high prison. She spoke no language that I could understand, but I read her simple thoughts easily. At first she feared me, but then seemed to recognize me. She cuddled close and slept beside me on a carpet of seal fur.
As I slept that night, the ants inside my brain returned. They moved like shadows in my dreams, scuttling and chirruping and growing larger. I had never heard them speak before now. But they spoke in some kind of dream-language that I understood only because they willed me to.
“You have served us well, Little Host,” they hissed. “Now our invasion begins.”
Ancient enemies of the Elder Things, they had found access to this world through the tunnels of my brain. Now the fleshy ant-farm in my skull broke open, and its occupants flooded the Earth. I saw that they were not truly ants at all, but giants made of living darkness. Their eyes were orbs of solar flame. I woke shivering in the darkness next to my new mate, and the nameless ant-giants came pouring from my brain. They flowed like black blood from my new eyes, ears, and mouth, slinking across the floor and rising into massive insectoid shapes, one after the other filling the room with their massive bulk. They flowed from my high tower cell as the oceans had once overflowed the continents.
In the streets of the Original City they demolished towers and trampled domes into dust, catching Elder Things like flies in their hungry jaws. A war of monstrosities raged below my high prison, and the Earth itself rumbled with the strain of it. The island girl leaped screaming through a star-shaped window and fell into the chaos below.
Dr. Silo’s words echoed inside my hollow mind.
“You are not like the others of your kind. You are special.”
My new body lay dying, smiling, listening to the howls of shoggoths and shadows.
I was home.
Publication History
“The River Flows to Nowhere” first published in Weirdbook #33 (2016)
“Behind the Eyes” first published in Space & Time #105 (2009)
“The Man Who Murders Happiness” first published in Weirdbook #35 (2017)
“Love in the Time of Dracula” first published in The Audient Void No. 5 (2018)
“I Do the Work of the Bone Queen” first published in Whispers from the Abyss (2013)
“The Taste of Starlight” first published in Lightspeed: Year One (2011)
“The Key to Your Heart is Made of Brass” first published in Fungi #21 (2013)
“Flesh of the City, Bones of the World” first published in Fungi #21 (2013)
“The Rude Mechanicals and the Highwayman” first published in Fungi #22 (2015)
“Anno Domini Azathoth” first published in That is Not Dead (2015)
“The Thing in the Pond” first published in Weirdbook Fall Annual #2 (2018)
“Lord of Endings” first published in Lovecraft eZine (2011)
“This is How the World Ends” first published in Cthulhu's Reign (2010)
“The Embrace of Elder Things” first published in Mountains of Madness Revealed (2019)
About the Contributors
JOHN R. FULTZ is a California writer originally from Kentucky. His published novels include Seven Princes (2012), Seven Kings (2013), and Seven Sorcerers (2013), as well as The Testament of Tall Eagle (2015) and Son of Tall Eagle (2017). His short stories have appeared in Year's Best Weird Fiction, Weird Tales, Black Gate, Weirdbook, That is Not Dead, Shattered Shields, Lightspeed, Way of the Wizard, Cthulhu's Reign, and plenty of other strange places. His latest collection of dark fantasy tales is Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021).
DON WEBB has written 25 books on subjects ranging from the Greek Magical Papyri to computer security. A former cult leader, he has placed over 11,000 images of cats on Facebook and written Lovecraftian fiction for fifty years (over twice as long as Lovecraft). His most recent book is Building Strange Temples (2020).
DAN SAUER is a graphic designer and artist living in Oregon. In 2016, he co-founded (with editor/publisher Obadiah Baird) The Audient Void: A Journal of Weird Fiction and Dark Fantasy, which features his design and illustration work. Since 2017, he has worked extensively on book covers, interior art and custom typography for Hippocampus Press and other publishers. His art often takes the form of surreal collage and photomontage, as pioneered by artists such as Max Ernst, Wilfried Sätty, Harry O. Morris and J. K. Potter.
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