A letter in a torn notebook

As I relay this account to my notebook I harbor no illusion that it may ever escape this prison of a mountain. If you found it, and you are human, you must have suffered through the same mistake I did.

What drove you to climb Mount Ebott? That mountain so accursed that none dare go near it, that none dare speak of other than in whispers? Was it foolhardiness? Did you believe the illusion that man is master of this world, and can tread wherever he wishes?

Whatever the cause, you have scaled its untamed incline and dropped into its bowel. You have met the monsters, surely, and you may have learned why they were sealed away.

I learned this, and more, and shuddered, as you have shuddered, at the endless sprawl of monstrous forms clamoring for humanity's eradication.

Perhaps you have even laid a link to the collection of writing I have, one that I once dismissed as mere fanciful fiction. Have you met the Queen Consort in the ruins, and identified her as the Goat with a Thousand Young? Did you encounter the slime molds crawling about in the temperate zones and call them by their true name: shoggoth?

If these indeed are their identities they are much weakened. The shoggoths are restrained, the Deep Ones mortal. But I have chanced upon worse horrors, not diminished, not identified.

I had thought it prudent to set up a base of sorts in the swamp of that area unimaginatively called "Waterfall." It is out of the way, and dimly lit, making it a good hideout for someone who cannot afford to be recognized. I took the additional precaution of a hooded cloak to hide my face, and relied on the strange blind spot of most monsters that they do not know what humans look like.

Food and drink I bought from an old turtle, gnarled and stained, joints popping when he moved, chin inexplicably graced by a beard. I paid with the strange golden coins I acquired here and there, or, when money was tight, by bartering with my own possessions. Most recently he expressed great interest in the antique pair of glasses I wore, and gave me a considerable supply of necessities in exchange for it. I am now forced to squint at things that are far away, but the notebook where I spend most my time is still clear, more so without the foggy lenses.

The danger of most of these monsters is almost human, at the level of petty politicking. Even all-out war is mundane, destructive as it may be, an old terror that poses no true novelty. But the swamp kept throwing me hints of something less explicable, a terror either new or rightly forgotten.

The first sign, which I connected only later to the other occurrences, was the strange many-colored flakes of matter sometimes scattered in the brackish water. Studying them I originally believed them to be fungal, perhaps a cousin of the other growths of the area, but their shapes are too regular to be of a natural nature, while they are plainly useless for any artificed purpose. Alone they were a curiosity, but their conjunction with other events now brings my throat to tighten and heartbeat to quicken when I spot them.

Next I kept being confronted by unsettling white tentacles. At first from a distance, the tendrils wrapping around corners and retreating as I tried to get a better look, but over time they grew closer, more daring, until a sudden confrontation two days ago, four of them surrounding me from all sides, extending above me to an unknown mass invisible in the darkness. They danced up and down, taunting me as I stood rooted to the ground, until the spell broke and I ran away. I did not fail to spot the flakes on the ground.

This is accompanied by intermittent cries, close during such encounters, distant outside them. I am not roused from sleep by the gurgles of the swamp nor by the whispers of the flowers, but these cries will jolt me awake and paralyze me where I lie.

There is no avoiding them. You, who still has time, should make camp some place else, and hope it hides no creatures of a similar caliber. But they are on my trail, and drawing near. Leaving would not deter them. They have smelled fear, and they would follow me.

My final moment draws near. Do you hear the cries? hOI! hOI!