Editing Coin's Journal (section)

==Entry two, dated Carneira Premercuri (2/4/347)==
[[File:Coin, Journal Entry 2.mp3| Coin journal entry 2]]
I have returned to the land feeling both triumphant and melancholy.

Yesterday, Inugs and myself entered one of the small fishing villages that dot the coastline on either side of Solace. Few of the older, salt-worn sailors wanted to make a journey with an unknown destination, let alone one with a goblin. Few have felt the urge to venture too far away from shore knowing that the few, scattered remains of Azathoth and its armies were returned to the blackest parts of the sea. One of the younger fishermen was swayed by the prospect of making more gold in a day than he would in a year and we set off the next day at noon. We sailed outward, the young man making slight adjustments in direction at my command as I kept my eyes locked on the Solace coastline and what remained of its towers and spires that once pierced the clouds. Hours later, I saw that sight again - the same image of Solace I saw when I was ripped from the ocean, save the rising fires and polluted skies. Somewhere beneath us was the sunken temple where I first glimpsed the eternal. 

Shrouded in the Cloak of the Manta Ray, I found myself lost in the shifting features of the water beneath us. It was in that moment, I hoped that this would be the last time I set foot in the Godless depths. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshiping ancient stone idols and carving their deities’ detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I often dream of the day when they rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind. Of a day when the land shall sink and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst pandemonium. 

And then, without realizing it, I was descending.

Pushing through a patch of sea plants was not only the temple, but this approach revealed the remnants of a sunken city with its buildings, arches, statues, bridges and colossal temple with its beauty and mystery. Neither age nor submersion corroded the pristine grandeur of the temple, and today after hundreds (if not thousands) of years it rests untarnished in the endless night and silence of an ocean chasm. Upon discovering the opening we entered upon our initial exploration, I retraced my steps to the great underwater cathedral where the tendrils of Azathoth greeted us. 

It was within these walls that I first heard the cacophonous rending of instruments both known and unknown to Terra. At the time, as the tendrils pulled us into a vast void, I thought it a ringing in my ears or a steady, alien vibration pulsing through the living walls. But Azathoth is gone, and the dirge reverberates impossibly clearly through the now silent halls. I followed those crooked notes to a second floor, emerging in a dry corridor. I reflexively gasped for air but was instantly choked by the odor of antiquity, and both marine life and death. It was not unlike the smell that pervaded the fishing village at low tide, but it brought with it the stale, corrupted air of a crypt. While normally this assault upon my senses might have overwhelmed me, I could now clearly hear the music and was immediately haunted by the weirdness of it. Knowing little of the art myself, I was yet certain that none of the harmonies had any relation to music I had heard before and could not conclude whether the composer was a highly original genius or a madman. The longer I listened, the more I was fascinated.

The damp hallway opened up, or perhaps opened down, and I found myself peering through crystal clear water at what can only be described as a sunken amphitheater. On the stage, performing now to an audience of one, was an orchestra of aquatic humanoids. In perfect synchronicity, the fish people all raised their heads simultaneously, not a single note missed, and gazed upon my intrusion. Suddenly and wordlessly, my head was filled with dozens of voices speaking as one. Just as they played in perfect harmony, so too did they communicate - an orchestra so in time from eternities of practice - that they have become a sort of hive mind, the type that may be seen in communities of insects. Through magic I could understand their projections and though we conversed they continued playing the spiraling melody, never missing a note.

The exact wording I can not recall but we spoke at length. I learned that these Merfolk were not only undead but cursed and condemned to a lifetime of solitude playing an endless melody. In a time before man as we know it today, these Merfolk raised arms against the ones who lived above the surface in the name of their God. Upon defeat, they were banished to these dark depths, trapped in an unliving and yet undying orchestra, performing a forgotten rite in the form of a lullaby meant to keep the Old One called Azathoth in slumber.

I informed them of everything that had occurred; the theft of Azathoth’s Eye, its awakening, attack and defeat. I described what I could of the Blind God’s amorphous appendages and the oozing darkness deep within its shell. The Merfolk had suspected such a thing had occurred, but this knowledge only intensified their play. For now, they explained, their magical prayers would be even more integral as Gods of both Terra and the infinite cosmos would seek to fill the void which remains in Azathoth’s wake. And indeed, Azathoth, the blind idiot God had not, and perhaps could not, die. It could only return to what it had always been, time and space, waiting for when all of space and time folds upon itself and is compressed into Azathoth at the center of all things, the nucleus of chaos, when the infinite cycle begins again as it always has and always will, and only Azathoth remains.

I inquired further about these existential magics which I had learned from my own research on the boundless daemon. The lingering traces of the knowledge I seek, in remnants of memories from forgotten cities, lay before me. And from within the space and silence between words of the tale told by the Last of R’lyeh, I fear I may have found madness. For what is madness but collapsing under the weight of being the only living creature with knowledge lost to time? Never before have I felt quite so alone as I did when my mind wrestled with the truths I learned. And almost in anticipation of my next set of queries, the conductor of the grand symphony stepped aside and motioned towards his lectern and the grimoire upon it. The exact text which I both hoped and feared would be here, hidden away from the eyes of those who would seek to use this knowledge for personal gain.

“Take it,” they spoke. “Others from above have borrowed it before. Somehow, it always finds its way back here, though its borrowers never do.”

What do we know of the world and universe about us? Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend while other beings with wider, stronger, or a different range of senses might not only comprehend the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy and life which lie just outside of our understanding. Even those at the top of the Magistery, those who have spent their lives dedicated to the mastery of magic do not (dare not?) know of the strange, inaccessible worlds, ideas and laws which have always existed but been misplaced by the ravages of passing time. And now, I believe I have found a way to break down the barriers. Within this text I believe I will see these things, and other things which no breathing creature has yet seen. I will see that at which dogs howl in the dark and which cats prick up their ears after midnight. I will leap over those other creations of Azathoth - time, space and dimensions - to peer to the bottom of creation.

In the time since returning from the blackened deep, the song which lingered for so long within my subconscious has been forgotten. Replaced by the chorus of Merfolk voices as they conferred their knowledge unto me:

''That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.''