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Stephen Fabian
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To the North-West I looked, and in the
wide field of my glass, saw plain the
bright glare of the fire from the Red
Pit, shine upwards against the underside
of the vast chin of the North-West
Watcher--The Watching Thing of the
North-West. . . .
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©
Stephen Fabian
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Beyond these, South and West of them,
was the enormous bulk of the South-West
Watcher, and from the ground rose what
we named the Eye Beam--a single ray of
grey light, which came up out of the
ground, and lit the right eye of the
monster. . .
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©
Stephen Fabian
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There rose the vast bulk of the
South-East Watcher--The Watching Thing
of the South-East. And to the right and
to the left of the squat monster burned
the Torches; maybe half-a-mile upon each
side; yet sufficient light they threw to
show the lumbered-forward head of the
never-sleeping Brute.
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©
Stephen Fabian
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And, so to tell more about the South
Watcher. A million years gone, as I have
told, came it out from the blackness of
the South, and grew steadily nearer
through twenty thousand years; but so
slow that in no one year could a man
perceive that it had moved.
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Yet it had movement, and had come thus
far upon its road to the Redoubt, when
the Glowing Dome rose out of the ground
before it--growing slowly. And this had
stayed the way of the Monster; so that
through an eternity it had looked
towards the Pyramid across the pale
glare of the Dome, and seeming to have
no power to advance nearer.
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©
Stephen Fabian
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Later, I travelled over to the
North-Eastern wall of the Redoubt, and
looked thence with my spy-glass at the
Watcher of the North-East--the Crowned
Watcher it was called, in that within
the air above its vast head there hung
always a blue, luminous ring . . .
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©
Stephen Fabian
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And I looked no more behind; for that
which was my Home did weaken my heart
somewhat, to behold; so that I made
determination that I look not again to
my back, for a great while.
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©
Stephen Fabian
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And, presently, I was come
upward almost to the top of the hill, the
which took me nigh three hours. And
surely, when I was come that I could see
the grimness of the Lesser Pyramid, going
upward very desolate and silent into the
night, lo! an utter shaking fear did take
me; for the sweet cunning of my spirit did
know that there abode no human in all that
great and dark bulk; but that there did
await me there, monstrous and horrid
things that should bring destruction upon
my soul. And I went downward of the hill,
very quiet in the darkness; and so in the
end, away from that place. |
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©
Stephen Fabian
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surely, our hiding did seem but a
futile thing unto our spirits; for it
was to us as that we did be watched
quiet and alway by a Power, as we slipt
gentle from bush unto
bush. . . .
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Stephen Fabian
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And, in verity, I knew that we two to
be dead indeed ere a minute be gone, if
that the Humans not to haste. And I
stood where I did be; for there was no
more use to run; and I lookt from the
Hounds unto the Mighty Pyramid, and
again to the Hounds. And again I lookt
with my hope gone, unto the Pyramid; for
the Hounds did be scarce two hundred
fathoms off from me; and there did be
hundreds of the mighty beasts. And lo!
even as I lookt that last time unto the
Pyramid, there brake out a monstrous
bursting flame, that did rush downward
from the Sealed lower part of the Mighty
Pyramid. And the flame smote downward
upon the Land where the Hounds did run
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©
Stephen Fabian
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And the Garden was a great country, and
an hundred miles every way, and the roof
thereof was three great miles above, and
shaped to a mighty dome; as it had been
that the Builders and Makers thereof did
remember in their spirits the visible
sky of this our present age.
And the making of that Country was all
set out in a single History of seven
thousand and seventy Volumes. And there
were likewise seven thousand and seventy
years spent to the making of that
Country; so that there had unremembered
generations lived and laboured and died,
and seen not the end of their labour.
And Love had shaped it and hallowed it;
so that of all the wonders of the world,
there has been none that shall ever come
anigh to that Country of Silence--an
hundred miles every way of Silence to
the Dead.
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