#Madness Lie Beyond The Ancient Chamber

[darktripz]

CTHYLLA - Madness Lie Beyond The Ancient Chamber

CTHYLLA - Stone Of Euclidean Chaos

CONIFEROUS MYST / DRAGON SPELL - Our Cathedral Within The Sky

DRAGON SPELL - Mountain Rehearsal 6/16/22

CONIFEROUS MYST - Knight of The Wyvern Covenant III

(LOST ARMOR RECORDS)

[cipactonalpilli]

Cthylla - A Madness Lie Beyond The Ancient Chamber (full demo, 2022)

[musicmakesyousmart]

Cthylla - Madness Lie Beyond the Ancient Chamber

Self-released

2022

[honourablejester]

A few more Spelljammer concepts

Just a couple more things to find out and about in Wildspace/The Astral Sea:

Ilthanor, the tentacle tower of Astraea, the Eldritch Lich. Astraea is a scholar first and foremost, and a collector of the strange, and considered eldritch lichdom the more ethical alternative to traditional lichdom. After all, while you may have an eldritch parasite in you whispering madness in your ear, and more tentacles than you did previously, at least you don’t have to eat souls. Only moderately insane, Astraea inhabits the black, glistening tower of dark rock carved with tentacles that is Ilthanor, serenely adrift in the Astral Sea, and is quite welcoming to guests (who do not steal from or attack her), especially if they might be persuaded to quest for the latest eldritch curio that has piqued her interest. (I mean, there’s an argument about the relative morals of various lichdoms? Also I like the relatively benign but utterly insane wandering sage trope)

The Lighthouses of the Luminous Order. The Astral Sea is riddled with dangers, not all of which are readily apparent before it’s too late. The Luminous Order is dedicated to creating beacons, lighthouses, to warn Astral traffic in the vicinity of dangerous systems, creatures, objects, and other, less clear-cut dangers. If you see a great beam of light sweeping the silver ahead of you, then you’ll soon be upon one of their lighthouses, installations that vary from rickety lightbuoys manned by autognomes to magnificent marble edifices that house larger gatherings of the Order. The Order is ever eager for recruits, for news of far-flung dangers, for volunteers to help them expand the reach of their lighthouse network, and for ships willing to supply their various lonely outposts. (These are the lightships from Sunless Sea, basically, but with almost a paladin order in charge?)

The Viridian Empress, the lone Star Moth of the infamous pirate Emeraud. Rumoured to be the lost princess of a destroyed world, Emeraud’s Viridian Empress has been modified, by Emeraud or by stranger forces again, to be crewed by her and her alone. Rather than ship-mounted weapons, Emeraud can cast spell attacks from the Empress’ vast crystalline wings while she pilots the ship from the spelljamming helm. The astral elven pirate flies under no flag but her own, and interferes with events around her according only to her own inscrutable whims. Anecdotes suggest, however, that Emeraud has a soft spot for worlds under threat, and an implacable sense of vengeance against those who have wronged her. (Yes, this is basically Queen Emeraldas, but spelljammer-ified. No, I do not apologise)

The Hollow Moon of Luure. A seemingly barren rock on the outer edge of an innocuous wildspace system, the Hollow Moon hides a horrific secret. While its pale sunward face looks down benignly on an innocent world, its dark side is a hive of activity around the black spires of a hidden port, where nautiloids dock around a great cavern opening to the interior of the moon. A vast mindflayer colony prospers here, centred around a great hollow cavern, where what was once an ancient lunar dragon has been converted, horrifically, into an elder brain dragon. This is not the extent of the elder brain’s design, however. While the colony is delighted to use the moon as a staging point for raids out into the Astral Sea, while the world slumbers obliviously beneath them, their true goal lies in another section of the moon’s hollowed interior: the egg chamber, where eight lunar dragon eggs still lie unhatched. The elder brain dragon has built many brine pools in anticipation of their hatching, carefully cultivating new elder brains from the willing deaths and devotion of its colony, so that when the time is right, it and its eight children shall march out upon the world below and the Sea beyond at the head of a truly apocalyptic illithid outpouring. (Lunar dragons plus elder brain dragons equals horrific eldritch invasion forces from the moon. Obviously. Fizban’s is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Best book ever)

Space fantasy (/horror) is the bomb. Heh.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Those Who Dare Disturb My Rest

The sun set over the desert, turning windswept dunes crimson red—then painting them in a dark blue hue. When the divine light disappeared beyond the horizon, the sky darkened and made way to a firmament filled with stars. The blistering heat of day vanished quickly and cutting winds carried cold air across the shifting sands.

In their wake, they swept away the tracks of a lonesome wanderer, step by step. A trail of footsteps left behind by a single person, staggering through the desert, disappearing into the entrance of an old tomb with crumbling statues flanking its entrance. And the tracks had vanished completely come dead of night.

The person who had left them awoke. Her eyes fluttered open and her environment startled her. The nightmares had reflected both her fears and her past, and the shock of awakening returned her to the nightmares of the now. She sat up and leaned against her own knee, tracing over her chapped lips with a finger. Seeing the khopesh—her husband’s curved blade of battle—and shield on the cool stone floor by her side reminded her of the grim reality she lived in.

Of her quest.

Neith was her name, an irony now lurking within its meaning: water.

She rose to her feet and struggled to keep her balance. No stranger to hunger, she could cope with that. But the dehydration robbed her of her strength and coordination. Strapping the shield back onto her arm and picking up the sword, she left the deserted tomb’s antechamber and exited the ancient ruin.

Not more long, and she would reach the tomb of Thesh. She hoped. Prayed—for the mercy of the god of the sun. The cold still made her shiver. No matter how long she slept during daytime to escape the brutal light, fatigue had become her constant companion. She sensed her current condition all too acutely—on the edge of starvation and due to her deadly thirst, walking along the threshold between the world of the living and the underworld.

As she stumbled ahead, up and down the dunes, ever forward toward her goal, she struggled to hold on to whatever happy thoughts she retained of her family.

The only thing that kept her wandering. The solitude of the accursed desert weighed against it, like a feather in the balance against her heart. Heartbeats, breaths, minutes, hours—the time dragged on as steadily and slowly as her sandaled feet moving her onwards. There was not one single creature she saw out here.

Half-buried skeletons stuck out of the sands by rocks and crumbled ruins that she passed by, bleached and bright-white in the moonlight. Grave robbers and other strange folk had ventured here before to plunder the treasures of the tomb she sought, but this land was forbidden by the high priests—and forsaken by the gods.

No one returned alive.

She was not sure if she would make the journey back herself, but she was determined to die trying. Back home, her beloved had already succumbed to the wracking disease that now also caused her daughter to waste away in a most slow and painful process. If anything could save them, it was the Offering from Thesh’s burial chambers. A relic of divine power that could heal any ailment, any injury—and even bring back dead souls from the underworld.

Such power that the pharaoh had it buried with him, so no unworthy mortals may misuse it and upset the balance of the world.

She was not educated, and knew not how much farther she would have to go. She was not of strong constitution, either, and knew not how much longer she would be able to walk before death claimed her as well. But she would not give up. Even now that her mind began to play tricks on her, even though she sensed that hallucinations were beginning to rob her even of her mind.

The wind carried whispers—some urging her to turn around, others luring her closer and closer. The wind also carried corns of sand, and with the cold air they cut across her skin like flurries of tiny knives. Every instinct told her that she drew closer and closer to her death.

When she saw a shrouded figure atop a dune in the distance, beckoning and awaiting her, she dragged her feet less. But when she arrived there and raised her weary head, she blinked to unblur her vision and found herself alone. No soul stood there, nothing whatsoever. Not even a pile of rocks that remotely resembled the person she had imagined.

Just the cruel cold wind howling around her. And a sea of sand all around, as far as she could see from the top of this dune.

She imagined that the Offering possessed such power that an oasis and wellspring of water would have formed around Thesh’s burial grounds. The thought of such a wonder kept her going. Not only the figment of a means of saving her family from the jaws of death, but the taste of crystal clear water, flowing past her lips and down her throat, giving her the life she needed to carry on. One foot after the other, she carried on.

And so, more time passed. Her muscles burned, blood collected in her lower extremities, and her head swam. Never stopping, her mind drifted in and out of conscious thoughts of her goal, savoring fantasies of all that might be, and trying to push back the horrors of the reality she lived—both the one she had left behind to pursue this quest, and the sense of imminent death that this infinite desert instilled in her heart.

Whenever her pace slowed down, she forced herself to pick it up again. She reminded herself: she had never done anything wrong. Nor had her family. The pestilence was a great injustice, and her plight—her march to the pharaoh’s tomb—a righteous undertaking. She would not give up. The forces of nature would have to rob her of every last ounce of strength. She would not enter the underworld without putting up a fight first. She believed her heart would prove to be feather-light.

The shield chafed against her arm. The blade weighed heavily in her hand, almost as heavy as her legs. She gripped the weapon tightly and told herself not to let go. One of the few things her husband had left behind, she refused to leave the khopesh behind. And if the legends were true, she would need it—for the ancient dead did not take kindly to those who dared disturb their rest. She had no blessings of priests to live by, only the bronze blade that had cut down countless men and could fell countless more.

She blinked again, fighting against the blurring and clouding of her strained eyesight. Her consciousness faded. Every breath of air that passed her throat was akin to liquid fire. No matter how much willpower she possessed or how determined she was, her flesh and bones teetered on the brink of surrendering to the unforgiving desert.

Every fiber of her body screamed at her, telling her to just lie down and rest—that everything would be alright. But she knew of this madness, that following its deceptive advice would spell out certain doom.

She looked over her shoulder and blinked and winced and blinked again, pushing back the shadows that encroached from the edges of her field of vision. Shadows that followed her, but were never really there. The trail of her footsteps in the sand weaved back and forth, nearly turning and giving her doubt. She wondered if she had been straying from her path.

She shook her head and refused. Neith could not afford to doubt now, and could not afford to waste any single breath or moment. Her eyes burned and her forehead creased as she made another effort to stare ahead and walk as straight of a path as she could manage.

When she ascended to the top of the next dune, she blinked again. Her mind—playing tricks on her again. It had to be. For she now beheld a strange set of statues carved into the face of large boulders, flanking the entrance to some subterranean crypt, surrounded by lush vegetation. Too far away for the sounds to be real, she imagined to hear the trickle of water from the pool in the middle of those trees and ferns. She swallowed emptily just imagining how she would drink greedily from oasis water. Another gust of cold wind made her shiver.

Continuing to stand atop the dune, her tired gaze swept back and forth over this strange place. But what she beheld proved to be no illusion. She stumbled forward, fighting back the tears. She could not afford to cry, could not risk shedding any more water with her salvation and destination turning out to be within such sudden reach. It seemed too good to be true. If this was an illusion, after all, she would need to steel herself for what came next.

The moments passed slowly despite her pace accelerating. She drew closer and closer to the pharaoh’s rest—and to that crystal-clear lifeblood in form of a shining pool of water.

She would live. The reflection of the moonlit sky in the water absorbed all her attention. It served as a beacon, leading her down the most direct path.

The leaves of plants rustled as she passed through them and let them slip by between her trembling fingers while she approached the body of water with tired steps. Collapsing to her knees, she unstrapped the shield from her arm and discarded it with the blade. She leaned forwards, staring into the reflection of the moon.

She leaned forward while cupping her hands and drew water from the source. Neith drank. She did so with care, first wetting her lips, then taking first sips. She knew better, knew to not be too greedy, to not shock her body with this sudden change in state. Neith saw stars when the inside of her mouth turned icy cold and she felt the water go down her gullet.

She savored the sips of water, swaying back and forth without noticing the passage of time. With no sense for her surroundings, she took all the time in the world, forgetting everything around her for those moments. This clear fresh water revived her.

Dates grew from the palm trees overhead, but once Neith caught herself eyeing them with hungry desire, she remembered her quest and her purpose of being here. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, gathering whatever remaining strength she could muster, knowing that some water alone had only prevented her death, not empowered her beyond her mortal frailty. She took each breath with more force than the last until her nostrils flared and she had worked up the courage she needed to proceed.

With deliberate care, she strapped the shield to her arm once more and rose to her feet with the khopesh in hand. In an almost ceremonial display of reverence, she crossed the arms in front of her as she marched towards the entrance to Thesh’s tomb.

Standing in front of the impenetrable darkness beyond that entrance, she hesitated after all. The sheer size of the arc overhead loomed far above her, dwarfing her. Were Thesh and his loyal subjects giants? The entrance to this tomb sure made it look that way.

Once more, she steeled herself with a series of fiercely deep breaths and took the first step into the darkness beyond. A gust of cold wind blew past her, urging her to press on and go deeper inside. Pace by pace, she descended down wide stone steps. Neith narrowed her eyes, waiting for them to adjust and straining to see around the shadow the moonlight cast from her own body—but not once pausing in her descent.

The final steps that took her to a solid ground at the feet of the stairs ended in grit and gravel crunching underneath the sole of her sandal. The tiny sound echoed in this monolithic hall. The silence that followed was deafening, even more oppressive than the sense of certain death and solitude of the desert that Neith had left behind her.

With the little light that poured in from the entrance, she could not make out the hieroglyphs and paintings on the walls. Bronze braziers set along them shone with reflections of the dim remnants of moonlight. Small rolls of cloth rested in between the braziers. The hall extended so far that darkness swallowed all light the farther she looked, obscuring how long this antechamber truly was.

She stood there for moments that could have been an eternity, lost in thought. So close and yet so far from the Offering that she sought. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight and when she looked down to her side, she caught her hand holding the khopesh to be trembling. She swallowed to rediscover the bravery that had carried her this far, despite all odds.

And then a shuffling sound broke the silence. Her eyes darted to the source and every muscle in her body turned as tense as steel. She had not thought, only reacted, now staring over the edge of the shield into this ominous darkness.

Another sound followed, the rustling of fabric sweeping over cold stone. The rolls of cloth along the walls moved. First only a finger’s width, then more. The absence of light remained, but the hallway awoke and Neith’s blood drained from her face, the dread surging through her limbs and sweat breaking out of every pore.

The rolls of cloth moved until they rose, revealing gaunt figures that turned and stared. A cloth fell completely from one and floated to the ground with an almost gentle slowness, another pulled at the decaying fabric and revealed skin with a texture so dull that no human should show. A dozen faces stared at her, eyeless, featureless, with mouths agape, and not breathing—only exhaling. The air that escaped the lips sounded like the final breaths of the dying—some in peace, some in agony, and some in terror.

Then they began to move, taking a single step each towards Neith and startling her in their eerie uniform timing. The step she took back caused more sand and dirt to crunch underfoot, and the sound of it echoed again, deafening now in contrast to how quiet this moment had been. And with that, the living dead walked, then stumbled, then ran. Right at her.

She turned to flee, slipping on one step and catching herself and looking back just in time. They had caught up to her, reaching out with spindly arms and skeletal hands, grabbing at her with a force that defied nature, with a hidden strength that revealed sinister purpose.

She swung the khopesh, but with all the strength the desert had sapped from her, the blade barely cut, it only clubbed into them and pushed these undead assailants back. Neith seized the opportunity and retreated back up as many steps as she could. With neither time nor pride to spare, a terrified scream escaped her lips before she gritted her teeth and swung at the walking dead once more, missing this time as they slowed down with an intelligence resembling that of feral beasts, now wary that their prey was willing and able to fight back.

The mummies exhaled again, spraying dust and the smell of death and recoiling like wildcats readying themselves to pounce, only awaiting the proper moment to attack again. Neith backed up the stairsteps, swinging each time and cutting the air before her to keep these menaces at bay, raising her shield whenever they paused their pursuit of her.

As hollow as the eye sockets that stared at her—through her—she felt a burning dread lurking within their darkness, a hatred for the living. Something old and angry. Ensnared souls that had been chained to dessicated corpses, left behind in one final act of slavery to guard this tomb. Those bone-dry withered hands swiped and pawed and clawed at her, always just outside of reach, with uncanny precision and suggesting a ferocious hunger for living flesh and soft innards.

Halfway up, the first lunged at her and she lashed out with her shield’s edge. It gave way like papyrus and mud would and emitted only a soft crack, but the force sufficed to push it back. As it went reeling and then tumbling back down from whence it came, others charged past, right into the sweeping swing of her blade. It kept them at bay for the next few steps but she slipped once more and felt the searing pain of pointy fingertips digging into the skin around her sternum and drawing blood. The mummies were upon her and she thrashed wildly to push them back once more, dragging herself up the steps and feeling one scratch open fresh wounds along the length of her calf.

Neith had suffered too much to get here and was unwilling to die now, so a cold fury gripped her heart and escaped her in form of a furious shriek as she pushed them back once more. The khopesh broke through dried skin and bones as she chopped into an arm attached to the hand that held her by an ankle. She thrashed with all her might to gain some space and crawled up more steps, fending off more mummified hands from grabbing her by hiding behind the shield as best she could.

Hands clawed past her side, parting skin to make way for blood to pour out and open painful injuries. The horde of undead proved their relentlessness despite each swing of the blade she took to make them keep their distance. No matter how much Neith struggled to fend them off, they were so many that it felt like she was drowning in a sea of living corpses, only inching away from them. With another yell, she heaved herself back onto her feet and ascended more while kicking and swinging at them without any sense of accuracy.

She stumbled once more but caught herself this time as she had reached the top of the stairs and her heels dug into the sand covering the stone plates in front of the tomb’s entrance. The undead pursuers continued outwards and emitted those ghastly sounds of exhaling, never inhaling, like a chorus of wheezing labored breathing of many dying men. Each time she swung with the weapon, they recoiled again, but there were so many. Her panic and their movement made it impossible to count. They swarmed out of the entrance, fanning out and surrounding her.

As another freezing gust of wind caught and engulfed her, Neith’s jaw quivered and her teeth rattled. Her eyes darted back and forth, she swiveled and pivoted as quickly as she could to ensure that none of them got too close. For as soon as one of them would grab her, it would all be over, so many had emerged from the depths to surround her here. The darkness within those dozens of hollow eye sockets appeared even more depraved and unfathomable than it had before. The mouths of the mummies stood agape, for no matter their devotion to Thesh in life, they all had died in incomprehensible terror when the high priests had removed their brains from their living bodies, lobe by lobe.

Neith raised the blade high over her head, still hiding behind her shield. She uttered words to the god of the sun: she pleaded for might and mercy alike.

Before she knew it, the khopesh cracked a mummified head as one of them lunged at her and a cloud of dust exploded from its skull. Bravery or fury, whatever drove her every movement did not matter. This was survival. The worn edges of sword and shield gleamed as she spun around, doing her best to fight these monsters while lacking the physical strength or technique to gain the upper hand.

Scratches opened around her belly once one of them got hold of her, and her elbow blindly connected to another mummified face, caving it in. But she could not break free, and in a matter of heartbeats, with only two of the unnatural creatures writhing on the ground and rising back up to their lifeless feet with choppy motions, she felt her limbs being held in the iron grip of many merciless hands. There was no warmth to the fingers that clutched and clawed at her, pulling in different directions while they began to drag her towards the tomb’s entrance and threatened to tear her limb from limb.

Then the world was set on fire. Flames engulfed Neith, the sickening smell of burnt hair filling her nostrils and her skin blistering from the sheer heat that surrounded her. The exhaling sounds from the walking corpses turned into horrid, inhuman shrieks and she collapsed to the ground.

Was this what the passage to the afterlife was like? This infernal heat, this pain? Where was the trial—the judgment that the priests promised all mortals?

She curled up into a fetal position, awaiting death. Conceding to the thought that she would perhaps be reunited with her husband, Ahmes, again. The afterlife awaited. At least she had tried and given it her all. Her daughter, Tena, would eventually join them, as well. Neith remembered their faces, their beautiful faces. Neith found comfort in remembering the soft looks on them from before the pestilence. She decided to forget all the pain she had endured to get here.

Neith surrendered.

The heat subsided. The tearing of her flesh never followed. The undead’s breaths had turned silent. When she opened her eyes, the world slowly came into vision. The warmth she felt came from rays of light, cast from the eternal sun rising on the horizon, wandering above the dunes like a fiery and triumphant chariot. Embers and ashes floated from the smoldering corpses of the mummies that had pursued her, now all of them collapsed into lifeless heaps, rendered into humanoid kindling, rapidly losing any resemblance of their ghastly former shapes.

Neith closed her eyes again and let the warmth of the sunlight wash over her, thinking that this hellish change of scenery only represented her passage into the afterlife. When she dared to open them again, she saw her environment unchanged, save for the wind having carried off more ashes from the burning dead. The sunlight had destroyed these wicked demons. Purged the unnatural creatures that did not belong.

She winced and suppressed a shout of pain as she pushed herself up off the ground into a sitting position. The sand getting into her countless wounds burned. The wind cooled her, the sunlight shone upon her. Neith wondered if the god of the sun had cursed or blessed her by extending her life thus.

She looked to the pool of water that adorned the oasis by the tomb. Then she looked back to the entrance of the pharaoh’s rest. Neith pulled her legs close and buried her face behind her knees.

She decided she would finish what she had started, but dreaded what might await her. More than mere legend, architects had filled the tombs of the buried god-kings with traps. And who knew how many other loyal servants of Thesh resided down below, guarding the tomb from grave robbers.

Neith slowly got back up, setting her jaw as it quivered in face of the pain she felt. She turned and lifted her arms, surveying the damage done. Most of it was superficial, but she would need to regain her strength if she was to stand a chance. She swallowed with the weight of the world on her shoulders, knowing there might be a way to bring back Ahmes and Tena should she succeed.

She looked to the dates that grew from the palm trees and back to the water. Now that Neith had made it this far, she would take each next step carefully. Rest here, nurse herself back to health as best she could, and explore the tomb in time. The Offering still awaited her.

Perhaps she had survived the worst already. The desert had not killed her, and this oasis would keep her alive for now. But deep down, she knew: however horrible the mummies in the antechamber had proven to be, whatever awaited deeper inside the tomb would be far, far worse.

And she would suffer each step.

With the sun rising quickly, and its rays illuminating the oasis, she could now read the engraving above the entrance, as shadows had hidden during the night before.

THOSE WHO DARE DISTURB MY REST, THOSE WHO DARE TRANSGRESS AGAINST GOD-KING THESH, THOSE FOOLS WILL PAY THE PRICE.

She was willing to pay that price, whatever suffering it may entail.

How much worse could it be than seeing the faces of her family, turning black with pustules, their skin rotting away from bone while alive?

—Submitted by Wratts

[autolovecraft]

The Goat with a Thousand Young … They found Gilman on the floor.

The old woman always appeared out of thin air near the corner where the downward slant met the inward-slanting wall. At last he woke in his bed in the crazily angled garret of the eldritch old house. Then he gave a start. This fusion of dream and reality was too much to bear.

The urge to walk was gradually changing to an urge to leap mystically into space, and by noon he had conquered the impulse to stare at vacancy. He was half lying on a high, fantastically balustraded terrace above a boundless jungle of outlandish, incredible peaks, balanced planes, domes, minarets, horizontal disks poised on pinnacles, and numberless forms of still greater wildness—some of stone and some of metal—which glittered gorgeously in the mixed, almost blistering glare from a polychromatic sky. As he listened he thought a rhythmic confusion of faint musical pipings covering a wide tonal range welled up from the ground floor. As for a plan of action—Gilman had better move down to Elwood's room and avoid sleeping alone. They were telling each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis Night, now only a few days off; and were exchanging pitying comments about the poor, doomed young gentleman. How could he be sure he would not land on that green-litten hillside of a far planet, on the tessellated terrace above the city of tentacled monsters somewhere beyond the galaxy or in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos where reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth?

Gilman felt that they must be a result, jointly, of his studies in mathematics and in folklore. Ahead raced the small, furry, sharp-toothed thing which haunted the moldering structure and the town and nuzzled people curiously in the black hours before dawn, he resolved to reply in kind, and his own hands reached out for the creature's throat. In another column it was stated that no trace of the missing child Ladislas Wolejko had been found vacant, though with all his clothing in place. How could he be sure he would not land on that green-litten hillside of a far planet, on the tessellated terrace above the city of tentacled monsters somewhere beyond the galaxy or in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos where reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth? Dombrowski left it the pall of its final desolation began to descend, for people shunned it both on account of its old reputation and because of the new foetid odor. Also, Dombrowski must attend to the poisoning of those rats in the walls. She could not tell the police, for they never believed such things.

This was April thirtieth, and with the dusk would come the hellish Sabbat-time it always mounted and reached through to the worlds to certain dreaded periods. For the moment his recollections were hopelessly hazy, but he recognized them none the less formed an additional count against the place.

It was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could survive entry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplied dimensions—be they within or outside the given space-time continua—though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space. He argued that the fever alone was responsible for his nightly fantasies, and that when the touch abated he would be free from the monstrous visions. On the morning of the twenty-ninth Gilman awakened into a maelstrom of horror. He seemed to know what was coming—the monstrous burst of Walpurgis-rhythm would be vibrating, and at last he would have to be done about those rats. He had better, he thought, sprinkle flour within the room as well as walked around the house in his sleep was plain, and it was by no means vacant, being crowded with indescribably angled masses of alien-hued substance, some of which appeared to be organic while others seemed inorganic. Braced up by Elwood's companionship, Gilman attended classes that day. She had told Judge Hathorne of lines and curves were frequently used at certain midnight meetings in the dark. Everybody shrieked when a large rat-like form suddenly jumped out from beneath the ensanguined bedclothes and scuttled across the floor to a fresh, open hole close by. Utter bewilderment and the fear of madness racked Gilman as he staggered to the door and saw that Brown Jenkin had not been sleep-walking was needed.

It had looked very queer to her, but of course the young gentleman had better be sure to wear the crucifix Joe Mazurewicz had given him. That the influence of the old house and up the rickety stairs. He was writhing under the bedclothes, and a moment later he had tightened it enough to cut off her breath.

Elwood.

Each of these knobs was the hub of a system of five long, flat, triangularly tapering arms arranged around it like the arms of a starfish—nearly horizontal, but curving slightly away from the central barrel. After about an hour he got himself under better control, and saw that there were no muddy prints outside. To some, though, had Gilman been there; and when told of the matter he wondered where he could have been wandering, barefoot and with only his night clothes on. At the same moment the disgusting form of Brown Jenkin in the gulf below he thought he heard rats in the wormy partitions, and the tiles were cut in bizarre-angled shapes which struck him as less asymmetrical than based on some unearthly symmetry whose laws he could not comprehend.

Still others, including Joe himself, have theories too wild and fantastic for sober credence. Nor was any spot in that city more steeped in macabre memory than the gable room which harbored him—for it could not stand up alone—was the exotic spiky figure which in his monstrous dream he had heard a terrific clattering overhead in the dark fighting to keep awake when a faint lambent glow would seem to shimmer around the centuried room, showing in a violet mist the convergence of angled planes which had seized his brain so insidiously. She was intoning some croaking ritual in a language which Gilman could not be very clear about his reasons for this last assumption, but his haziness here was more than the honest physician could say. No amount of persuasion, however, that it was like an ancient crone whom he had twice actually encountered in the dark.

What made the students shake their heads was his sober theory that a man might—given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood of human acquirement—step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body which might lie at one of an infinity of specific points in the cosmic pattern. In the evening they drowsily discussed the mathematical studies which had so completely and perhaps harmfully engrossed Gilman, and speculated about the linkage with ancient magic and folklore which seemed so darkly probable. He would speak to the landlord about them. There was much in the Essex County records about Keziah Mason's trial, and what had been near her rattling the tin can in a rubbish-heap at the mouth of the gangway just after midnight. Lying on its side—for it could not stand up alone—was the exotic spiky figure which in his monstrous dream he had broken off the fantastic balustrade.

Gilman's dreams, nothing filled him with greater panic and nausea than this blasphemous and diminutive hybrid, whose image flitted across his vision in a form a thousandfold more hateful than anything his waking mind had deduced from the ancient records and the modern whispers. That was in 1692—the gaoler had gone mad and babbled of a small white-fanged furry thing which scuttled out of Keziah's cell, and not even Cotton Mather could explain the curves and angles smeared on the gray stone walls with some red, sticky fluid. She could not tell the police, for they never believed such things. How long would it last? He saw that Elwood had dropped asleep, and tried to call out and waken him.

Elwood in his chair. This fusion of dream and reality in all his experiences. Elwood canvassed the local museums in an effort to identify the strange spiky image on the table, while the low ceiling slanted gently downward in the same direction.

They were telling each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis Night, now only a few days off; and were exchanging pitying comments about the poor, doomed young gentleman.

Of his own condition he could not well judge, for sight of his arms, legs, and torso seemed always cut off by some odd disarrangement of perspective; but he felt that he must have been half drunk when he came home the night before; yet the mention of a violet light in the garret chamber, were wholly beyond the pale of sanity, and Gilman waited up for him. A definite point among the stars had a claim on him and was calling him. During a free period he showed the queer image to several professors, all of whom were intensely interested, though none of them could shed any light upon its nature or origin. He awakened on the morning of April twenty-seventh a fresh rat-hole appeared in the room below.

No, he had not seen that thing before and did not know, but he had needed the help very badly and thought that someone fumbled clumsily at the latch. Time could not exist in certain belts of space, and suddenly he realized just where the source of the pull lay.

Ahead was the robed black man he had seen the faint violet glow within. For three days Gilman and Elwood exchanged whispered theories of the wildest kind. He would speak to the landlord about them. Life had become an insistent and almost unendurable cacophony, and there was a discussion of possible freakish curvatures in space, and of the violet dream-light had got abroad. This time they actually reached him, and he looked back across the level terrace.

[swipestream]

New Release Roundup, 29 September 2018: Fantasy and Adventure

Steampunk airships, buried Egyptian ruins, fallen angels, and the Titanic feature in this week’s roundup of the newest releases in fantasy and adventure.

Assault Against the Heavens – Robert Wagner

Daon is a Bronze Man, a member of an elite force of lawkeepers who protect and carry out the will of The Celestial Lord. Even though he was sold into this life as a child, just like his fellow soldiers, his beliefs are much different than theirs. Daon hates The Celestial Lord and would like nothing more than to be free.

His hope is a small thing, since The Celestial Lord is a God, who came down from his throne in the heavens to rule the people of Eur directly.

When a stranger to the capital city arrives, Daon finds himself swept up into a conspiracy, along with his friends Naya and Gal, to depose The Celestial Lord.

Caught between the duty ingrained in him and his desire for freedom, his loyalty to his friends or the loyalty to his God, one thought dominates all the others.

Can Daon even fight against a God?

Avenging Ava (The Heroes of Razak #1) – C. J. Evans

“The bear stood on it’s hind legs, and it appeared to stand twelve feet tall. It’s roar paralyzed the forrest in terror and dread. Even the birds stopped singing out of fear.“

Nate and his family live just outside of the village on their farm. One day Nate’s younger sister, Ava, is gruesomely killed by a bear. Nate goes out and seeks to avenge the death of his sister, so he joins a hunting party to go out and kill the beast! Yet there is something about this bear that doesn’t sit right… there’s something different about it… almost some sort of dark magic… Nate is in for more than he bargained for…

This novelette was partially inspired by the same story that inspired J.R.R. Tolkein, Beowulf. This is the first story in a fantasy anthology, and it’s a fun introduction to the world of Razak!

The Eternal Chamber (Relics of Deathless Souls #1) – Tom Hunter

Archaeologist Samuel McCarthy is on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery. The treasure map had led him this far, but the ancient Egyptian defenses and advanced cloaking technology guarding the cave prove impossible for one man to penetrate. Unfortunately, the men who answer his call for help may be more dangerous than the powerful artifacts buried deep underground…

Antiquities Ministry staffer Shafira Khouri longs to trade her desk job for the dig site. But when an office overhaul turns deadly, she knows she’s her colleagues’ only hope of survival. After the ministry falls into enemy hands, she fears her first field assignment could be her last…

If Samuel and Shafira can’t stop a shadowy organization from grabbing hold of a terrifying relic, the entire world could become ancient history.

The Fight for Rislandia (The Adventures of Baron von Monocle #3) – Jon del Arroz

The Wyranth Empire is marching on Rislandia City. Zaira Von Monocle and her airship crew are all that stands between the invading army and the total destruction of her country.

After her expedition to the Zenwey continent, Zaira discovers the Wyranth have a new source of their giant’s blood soldier serum. The enemy has pressed the advantage and used the lack of an airship threat to gain ground. Meanwhile, the Rislandian Grand Army is running low on supplies and food. They can’t hold out forever.

Join Zaira and her crew as they try to take on the full might of the Wyranth Empire and deal with a deadly surprise the Iron Emperor has waiting for them in the conclusion to this epic steampunk trilogy!

First Level (Replay #1) – John Gunningham

Waking up in a strange place with no memory of who you are or how you got there is bad enough but when Lana finds out she’s stuck with Peter, who seems overly excited by the prospect of an adventure, she starts to get a bad feeling. To make matters worse, Lana finds out she’s dead, has no memory of the past, and all the talk of skills, leveling up and questing make her want to scream.

All Lana wants to do is find a way to get home, wherever that is, but Peter is more than content to stay and see what this strange world filled with merchant gnomes, minotaur bartenders and angry house toughs have to offer.

Could Peter have something to do with Lana’s current, infuriating state or is he just as lost as she is as they fight towards answers and their FIRST LEVEL!

It Ain’t Easy (The Valens Legacy #10) – Jan Stryvant

With his home now secure, Sean can take the time to start catching up on the million and one things he’s been meaning to do, but never quite seemed to have the time. However, life is really never that simple. Sean’s two armies, run by his friend Chad and his great uncle Maitland are coming across a few things hinting that the Vestibulum aren’t ready to give up the fight quite yet.

The government and its minions are still not quite sure what to make of Sean or the lions he claims to represent. Divisions exist at the highest levels, and when the president decides to open a line of communications, those who are opposed to the idea are quick to act. The problem however is that while politics may make for strange bedfellows, when dealing with forces that aren’t quite human, discretion is highly advised before jumping into bed.

Masters of Deception – J. C. Kang

Hunting a traitor to the clan that raised her, half-elf spy Jie just wants to complete her mission and return home. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a foreign port, where warring crime factions vie for control of the city’s pyramid.

Cassius Larusso, a local diviner and conman, knows why: atop the pyramid sparkles a Dragonstone, preventing the Orc Gods from returning to the world. His family’s thousand-year mandate to protect the ancient artifact is almost as important to him as filling his coffers with gold, his stomach with delicious food, and his bed with a different type of delicacy.

Joined by Sameer, a paladin pursuing his forbidden love, and Brehane, a sorceress seeking her lost teacher, Jie must choose the right side in a game of shifting alliances and deception. Cassius will lie, cheat, and steal to get her to pick his.

A wrong choice doesn’t just mean that Jie can’t go home; it could lead to the downfall of humanity.

The Night Crossing – Robert Masello

Bram Stoker kept secret a tale even more terrifying than Dracula.

It begins among the Carpathian peaks, when an intrepid explorer discovers a mysterious golden box. She brings it back with her to the foggy streets of Victorian London, unaware of its dangerous power…or that an evil beyond imagining has already taken root in the city.

Stoker, a successful theater manager but frustrated writer, is drawn into a deadly web spun by the wealthy founders of a mission house for the poor. Far from a safe haven, the mission harbors a dark and terrifying secret.

To save the souls of thousands, Stoker—aided by the explorer and a match girl grieving the loss of her child—must pursue an enemy as ancient as the Saharan sands where it originated. Their journey will take them through the city’s overgrown graveyards and rat-infested tunnels and even onto the maiden voyage of the world’s first “unsinkable” ship…

Nostrum (The Scourge #2) – Roberto Calas

Sir Edward Dallingridge survived his journey through the anarchy that is now England, leaving in his wake the bodies of mad lords, foul invaders, friends, and the risen dead. There was nothing on earth that could keep him from the woman he loves.

Nothing but the horror that has already consumed her.

His journey is over, but his mission is far from complete. As a knight of the realm, he has defended England from every enemy it has. But how does one drive away a plague sent from hell? His only hope lies in the rumors of a cure–a treatment concocted by a strange man on an island fortress. Edward will do everything in his power to find this alchemist and to bring Elizabeth back from the walking terror she has become.

The Solitude of Sin (The Exinar #2) – Mikkell Khan

Twenty years have passed since the annihilation of the god ruler, Gudrunn. Yet, fractures and remnants of his domination still remain.

Princess Athena, the royal couple’s daughter, is a shining example of the benevolent rule that is loved by both the countryfolk and the rebels and is seen as one to bring peace to the Kingdom.  One night in desperation, she is kidnapped by a power-hungry tyrant and discovers the universe is far stranger than she ever thought. One day she is living a fairytale life, the next she becomes a gateway between her kingdom and Alpha Sinteres – a metaphysical plane of existence and a source of unlimited magic.

Ruil, a young man with wizardly healing abilities, could not imagine he would transition from lowly stable-boy to member of the princess’ rescue mission in a single night. He had no idea that this coming of age quest would bring him to the likes of, witches, shapeshifters, telepathy, and machines with the power of gods. Nor was he prepared for the level to which human betrayal, pain, love, and survival would take a person.

This experience would change them both, this unbinding from the comfort which they both knew, this Solitude of Sin, to which they would never be the same again…

The Warrior’s Path (Tales of Gorania #1) – Karim Soliman

Discover the world of Gorania with Masolon, the warrior from the mysterious lands beyond the Great Desert, the outcast who refuses to be the warring monster his clan needs and instead he becomes a kinslayer, the sinner who forges his path of salvation in the broken empire of Gorania with the help of his most—and probably his only—trustworthy friends: his sword and his horse.

As he wanders the kingdoms sprawling over the sun-blazed south and the snow-frosted north, Masolon builds his army to enforce his own notion of justice. His war provokes the ruthless lords of the warring realms, and the merciless outlaws who infest every corner in Gorania—a war he might survive with his body, but not with his mind.

Now enemies and false friends close in from all sides. And Masolon, shrouded in his own cocoon of guilt, meets one fiery girl who could help him find peace for his restless heart. Or maybe peace is just a delusion, and his path to redemption is nothing but a lie.

Vessel of Venus (The Diary of an Ex-Angel #2) – Richard Cain

Mark is a down-and-out IT professional with a secret. When he discovers a sorcery app that gives him incredible powers, he sets out to win his ex-girlfriend’s love and start a new life – until Venusians show up, sharing the story of how their civilization was destroyed by global warming and giving Mark the chance to fight climate change. All he has to do is offers them a sacrifice once in a while.

Will he get the girl? Will everyone finally realize that he’s the most amazing person ever? And will that damn talking locust ever shut up and leave him alone?

You’ll find out in the dementedly hilarious Vessel of Venus.

“Read this to find out the real story behind: The clean up after the the deluge to eliminate evidence of the prior civilization, such as air conditioning and the Nephilim. Pixies. Haunted houses. Crop circles. Aliens.” – Reader Review

.44 Caliber Preacher (Ben Baxter’s Western Adventures #1) – Troy C. Wagstaff

Ben is honor bound and obligated to get revenge when everything turns against him, including getting charged for murder and other crimes he didn’t commit. A sheriff and posse go after him as well as every other lawman and bounty hunter in the west desert.

In spite of the numerous challenges and obstacles Ben presses on. His integrity is challenged when one of the lawmen after him is wounded and falls under Ben’s care. The sheriff wants to see Ben hang. Will Ben get the wounded sheriff the help he needs or let him die?

In spite of the hair raising adventure Ben is on, he comes across evil men determined to destroy a town. The town offers him the job of being their sheriff. What does Bens honor dictate? Will he take the job or keep looking for his pard’s killer?

Preacher Zachary Monroe, a preacher from San Francisco is running from his painful, haunted past. Suddenly the preacher and Ben cross paths. Do they join forces to help each other in their quest or do they go their separate ways?

  New Release Roundup, 29 September 2018: Fantasy and Adventure published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[ulyssesredux]

Hades

Something new to hope for not like. My son. The greatest disgrace to have been afraid of the obliterated edifices; but a monument of the people—always represented by the men anyhow would like to see us, Mr Power asked: And, Martin Cunningham said.

Just that moment I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the outside world from which it was ever alive; but it is a little sandstorm that hovered over the gray stones though the moon, and stopped still with closed eyes, free to ponder, many things I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and of Ib, that soap: in my native earth.

Poor little thing, Mr Bloom turned away his face. Fragments of shapes, hewn.

Has that silk hat ever since I first saw the dim outlines of the city above. Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Power said.

Hynes inclined his ear. Thought he was going to Clare.

A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the road. Presently these voices, while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked.

Where did I put her letter after I read in that Palaeozoic and abysmal place I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so that all the time I became conscious of an artistic anticlimax. The other drunk was blinking up at a bargain, her bonnet awry.

Refuse christian burial. For instance some fellow that died when I glanced at the auction but a monument of the dark I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random. Leading him the life.

Mr Bloom said.

Same old six and eightpence. The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think, Martin Cunningham said.

The ree the ra the ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Tiresome kind of a definite sound—the vegetations of the abyss. See your whole life in a parched and terrible valley and the desert of Araby lies the nameless city had been, and that its voices were hideous with the other firm. Light they want. From one extreme to the boy. Let them sleep in their skulls. First the stiff.

I often thought, is to a long rest. An obese grey rat toddled along the rocky floor, my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad poet dreamed of the law. —After you, Mr Power said, poor mamma, and was presumably a natural cavern since it bore winds from some rock fissure leading to a sitting posture and gazing back along the tramtracks. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, I wonder. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and I trembled to think of them. Unmarried. Heart. —Never better. —And, after blinking up at her for some time. Ought to be natural, and at the same time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or mere footholds in a flash. People talk about you a bit softy.

Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. No, Mr Dedalus said. Shows the profound knowledge of the street this. All waited. Swung back open against the luminous realm beyond; for instead of other and brighter chambers there was no relic of crudity like the past rather than the future. Mr Bloom agreed. And then in a creeping run that would get a job.

—John O'Connell, real good sort.

Wet bright bills for next week. I could make a walking tour to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Most amusing expressions that man finds. The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus asked.

He's dead nuts on that here or infanticide.

Can't believe it at the window as the wind died away I was quite unbalanced with that job, shaking that thing over them all. Rtststr! He knows. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing—too far beyond all the orifices. But in the whole course of my form toward the outside, was larger than the rooms in the hole. Then he walked to the only human image in that picture of sinner's death showing him a sense of power seeing all the ideas of man.

Our windingsheet. Mr Bloom began, and the legal bag. —Where are we? Heart. Only a pauper.

—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Kernan answered. He looked down at his sleekcombed hair and at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. Wait, I have. Wouldn't it be more decent than galloping two abreast? Lay me in the family, Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the earth in his hand pointing. —Yes, Mr Power pointed. I know that fellow would get a job making the new invention? Eight children he has to say. Good hidingplace for treasure.

The chap in the nameless city I knew it was a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the coffin on to the lying-in hospital they told me. Wet bright bills for next week. Murderer is still at large. I shuddered at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.

The blinds of the inquest. Depends on where. Kicked about like snuff at a wake.

Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Had slipped down to the other temples. In all his life. Give you the creeps after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything.

Peter. A tall blackbearded figure, Not a bloody bit like the temples—or worse—claims me. Such fury I had fancied from the Coombe and were passing along the cliff. Crape weepers.

Martin Cunningham cried. Tantalising for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert said, in Wisdom Hely's.

One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on their hats, Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and sadly twice bowed his head. I found myself in a skull.

—Of the tribe of Indians. Better value that for?

—Yes, he said. Five. I was crawling. A raindrop spat on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or something. My boots were creaking I remember how the Arabs fear the nameless city under a cold moon, and the city and the vast reaches of desert still. Mr Power said. But the shape is there. Did I write Ballsbridge on the earth. Liquor, what Peake is that beside them. Terrible comedown, poor fellow, John Henry Menton is behind.

Crowded on the Freeman once. A tall blackbearded figure, bent over piously. Faithful departed. An ancientness so vast that measurement is feeble seemed to restore my balance, for when I thought I saw signs of the landscape. 11 p.m. closing time. But in the form of a job making the new invention? He had a sudden death, poor Robinson Crusoe was true to life, where I must see about that ad after the other day at the boots he had floated on his hat. Mr Bloom said, looking as if it wasn't broken already. Oot: a dark red. The nails, yes. Doing her hair, humming. All want to be natural, and another thing I often thought it would be awful! Mr Bloom said, in the fog they found the grave. Said he was going to get black, black as witches' cauldrons are, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his drawling eye. —Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? —Did you hear him, turning away, looking out. The murderer's image in that suit. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life. —O, excuse me! There he is. The mourners moved away, placed something in that cramped corridor of wood and glass in its desertion and growing ruin, and in the world.

Nelson's pillar. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls the firm. Gone at last. —We are the soles of his soul. Huuuh!

Let us, dead as he is not dead which can eternal lie, and much more bizarre than even the physical horror of my experience.

The carriage moved on through the drove. Three days. Voglio e non. Start afresh. Ay but they might object to be prayed over in Latin. Or the Moira, was it? But in the day. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. Eccles street. National school. Mr Power gazed at the abysmal antiquity of the corridor toward the abyss. Like dying in sleep.

Yet sometimes they repent too late. And, after blinking up at the possible implications. The whitesmocked priest came after him, Mr Dedalus said about him. Then getting it ready.

Mr Bloom said. He cried above the ruins which I was alone.

—What is this used to be buried out of that. They wouldn't care about the muzzle he looks at life. John Henry Menton said, looking up at her for a moment before advancing through the armstrap and looked seriously from the delirious Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz. Of course the cells or whatever she is in heaven if there is no legend so old as to give. Charnelhouses. Watching is his coffin. We are the last. Can't bury in the afternoon. —As decent a little in his office in Hume street. Glad to see and hear and feel yet. But the shape is there still. Refuse christian burial. Shame of death. I'm thirteen.

So it is a word throstle that expresses that. —And tell us, Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly. Thanks to the road. Pray for the wife. The Lord forgive me! Martin Cunningham asked. Madame, Mr Dedalus said. Mr Power asked through both windows.

I was crawling. Your terrible loss. That one day he will come again. Mr Power sent a long tuft of grass. —I am just looking at them: sleep. Dick Tivy bald?

The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in Wisdom Hely's. —At the time I became conscious of an artistic anticlimax. Full of his traps.

Holding this view, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling of strange-tongued fiends. Ow. But the shape is there.

I saw later stages of the nameless city, and afterwards its terrible fight against the left. The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus said, that would get a job.

—Yes, Menton. —And, Martin Cunningham said. —I hope not, Martin Cunningham, first, as though I saw him last and he determined to send him to a long distance south of me.

Ye gods and little Rudy. No passout checks. A sad case, Mr Dedalus said with a new throb of fear as mine. —Or worse—claims me. Most amusing expressions that man has forgotten, with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of the passage was a desert. Courting death … Shades of night hovering here with all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why. Thy will be done. —Are we all here now?

Mervyn Browne.

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said: Some say he was struck off the train at Clonsilla. Always in front? By the holy land. —Always represented by the wayside. Had enough of it. Girl's face stained with dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, Mr Power said.

—Macintosh. Eight for a moment before advancing through the stillness and drew me forth to see us, Mr Kernan added: I am the resurrection and the unknown world. A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Horse looking round at it with his shears clipping. A portly man, clad in mourning, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the floor since he's doomed. Entered into rest the protestants put it back in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to me.

That book I must say. He's gone from us. He moved away a donkey brayed.

An empty hearse trotted by, Dedalus, he did, Mr Dedalus asked. Last lap. I had with me many tools, and the corpse fell about the muzzle he looks. I'm thirteen. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. Heart. This cemetery is a word throstle that expresses that. Good job Milly never got it. Be the better of a definite sound—the crawling creatures, I suppose, Mr Kernan said with solemnity: Some say he was buried. The blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the daisies? Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. He keeps it free of weeds. What way is he taking us? The carriage steered left for Finglas road. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the world everywhere every minute. Down with his shears clipping. —My dear Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. I spent much time tracing the walls and bygone streets, and the gravediggers came in, blinking in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in a country churchyard it ought to be believed except in the kitchen matchbox, a small man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the man. Priests dead against it. —Thank you.

Last lap. As I thought curiously of the reptile kind, with the roof was too regular to be believed except in the knocking about? They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house.

He was a queer breedy man great catholic all the juicy ones. The malignancy of the inquest. —Ah then indeed, concerned the past rather than the future. For my son.

Mr Bloom began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little sandstorm that hovered over the world everywhere every minute. Big place. Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. And if he could dig his own grave. More sensible to spend the money.

Corny Kelleher stepped aside nimbly. Seat of Death throws out upon its slimy shore. An empty hearse trotted by, coming from the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have in Milan, you know. The Gordon Bennett cup.

Now that the passage was painted scenes of the human heart. Corny, Mr Power whispered. Gordon Bennett cup. —Martin is going to paradise or is in paradise.

Decent fellow, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. Great card he was a pitchdark night.

I was alone. Martin, Mr Power announced as the wind was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the repose of his hat.

—It does, Mr Power said laughing. If it's healthy it's from the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. The crown had no evidence, Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a narrow passage whose walls were lined with cases of wood and glass I shuddered oddly in some marvelous manner to another world whereof their prophets had told them. First round Dunphy's and upset the coffin.

Pure fluke of mine turned by Mesias. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the cavern was indeed a temple. Carriage probably. Got wind of Dignam. Good idea a postmortem for doctors.

Dead animal even sadder. We come to look if foot might pass down through that chasm, I saw that the passage was painted scenes of the landscape.

Mourning coaches drawn up, Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power said. I knew that I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

Poor boy! The greatest disgrace to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the name: Terence Mulcahy.

Like down a coalshoot. Don't you see what it means. Their eyes watched him. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. How could you remember everybody?

Mr Power said. There's the sun peering redly through the gates: woman and a haunter of far, ancient, and in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my form toward the outside, was larger than the other. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hope it's not chucked in the luminous aether of the city above, but I could not quite stand, but saw that the Chinese say a man who takes his own grave.

You will see my ghost after death named hell. Looking at the time, for I instantly recalled the sudden local winds that I did not, Martin Cunningham said, if men they were firmly fastened. The lowness of the icy wind almost quenched my torch. —Are we late? What way is he?

With matchless skill had the artist.

Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand to trace it to its source; soon perceiving that it came from the long mooncast shadows that had daunted me when first I saw the portly figure make its way deftly through the sluices. —Always represented by the canal. Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the world everywhere every minute. There, Martin Cunningham said. Thousands every hour. —God grant he doesn't upset us on the way to the other. It was all vividly weird and realistic, and was about to lead him to a place slightly higher than the other. Hoping some day to meet him on in life. Never know who will touch you dead. If we were all the others. —I'll engage he did, Mr Bloom asked. And if he could see what could have happened in the six feet by two with his plume skeowways. Is that his name was like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. In another moment, however, could match the lethal dread I felt a level floor, my ears ringing as from some metallic peal. You heard him say he is. The one about the dead letter office. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to its source; soon perceiving that it would be so closely followed in a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave.

Eccles street. I shall always see those steps in my native earth. Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Holy fields. Would you like to see and hear and feel yet.

Only two there now. I don't want your custom at all. They were of the Nile. Yet sometimes they repent too late. They say a man who does it is. As I viewed the pageant of mural history I had noticed in the hotel with hunting pictures. Their eyes watched him. I saw to that unvocal place; that place which I was quite unbalanced with that dark pitch the Seat of Death throws out upon its slimy shore. The place was not high enough for kneeling.

Does anybody really? Tiresome kind of a cold moon, and unknown shining metals. Time had quite ceased to worship. Making his rounds.

No other man shivers so horribly when the father on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him.

It is only in the dark I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random.

More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind rattles the windows, lowing, slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on with my camel slowly across the desert when thousands of its greatness. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. Cramped in this lower realm, and could not be seen in the, fellow was over there. Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him now: that backache of his, I received a still greater shock in the grave sure enough. They struggled up and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and places I wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell on him every Saturday almost. He asked me to.

Is he dead? Stuffy it was. They looked. Lethal chamber. Blazing face: redhot. They could invent a handsome bier with a fluent croak. Then a kind of panel sliding, let it down that flight of steps—small numerous steps like those which had intermittently seized me ever since I first saw the portly kindly caretaker. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and I found myself starting frantically to a cave, and with strange aeons death may die. I came to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet I defied them and went into the mild grey air. More interesting if they told me. He is right.

He took it to conceive at all.

Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Many a good word to say something. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in your prayers. Where is he now? —Well, I crawled out again, avid to find there those human memorials which the race that worshiped them. —Better ask Tom Kernan? Blazing face: grey now. —It does, Mr Power.

Not arrived yet.

At night too. Tail gone now.

—Ah then indeed, and half-revealing the splendid perfection of former times, shown spectrally and elusively by the men straddled on the quay next the river on their caps. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet I defied them and went off, followed by the wayside. Ought to be believed except in the sky was clear and the vast reaches of desert still.

The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus nodded, looking up at one of the morning in the earth. We must take a charitable view of it.

Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in a brown habit too large for him. Out of deference to the father on the other. Had slipped down to the distant world to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it from the passage at regular intervals, and the sand grew more and more still, till the east grew gray and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. Read your own obituary notice they say is the pleasantest.

Sympathetic human man he is. But the worst in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look if foot might pass down through the gates: woman and a girl in the world everywhere every minute. Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. After life's journey. Dunphy's and upset the coffin and some kind of a job.

I led my camel. The grand canal, he was, I think, Martin Cunningham whispered. I grew faint when I saw its wars and triumphs, its troubles and defeats, and the daemons that floated with him down the steep steps, and its soul. —I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. The paintings were less skillful, and niches, all of himself that morning in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have such a rooted dislike to me. No.

Peter Paul M'Swiney's. He caressed his beard. Mourning too. —O, that soap: in my native earth.

Lethal chamber. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same boat. They tell the story, he does. —It's as uncertain as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Only the grim brooding desert gods know what they meant. Find damn all of himself that morning in the vacant place. Martin, Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. —I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Kernan answered. Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Bloom said pointing. Not a budge out of them. Dogs' home over there, Martin Cunningham said.

The ree the ra the roo. Devil in that suit. —Blazes Boylan, Mr Dedalus said. Let Him take me whenever He likes. The narrow passage led infinitely down like some hideous haunted well, sitting in there all the juicy ones. Deathmoths. I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom. Wash and shampoo. Feel no more in her heart of grace, one after the funeral. Policeman's shoulders. Who knows is that Parsee tower of silence? Martin Cunningham said.

Has that silk hat ever since I first saw the nameless city and dwelt therein so long where they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys. Mr Power said. Do you follow me?

—As it should be as low as those in the house opposite. Suddenly there came a gradual glow ahead, and that its voices were hideous with the basket of fruit but he said shortly. We come to look for the first sign when the nameless city under a cold moon, and shewed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand. Never see a dead one, covering themselves without show. Respect. Love among the weird ruins.

Got the shove, all of himself that morning. The carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held.

—Why? Just when my fancy dwelt on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white forms. Who departed this life. Got here before us, Mr Power said.

Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely. Ay but they might object to be flowers of sleep. Plant him and have special trams, hearse and took out the damp. Just a chance. Remember him in the … He looked down at his sleekcombed hair and at the sources of its struggles as the wind died away I was still holding it above me as if it were ablaze. Night had now approached, yet there were curious omissions.

The civilization, which presented a contour violating all known biological principles. Corny Kelleher stepped aside nimbly. I could not doubt, and stopped still with closed eyes, secretsearching. Pure fluke of mine turned by Mesias. As it should be as low, since the glow was very strange, for I could stand quite upright, and wondered at the reticence shown concerning natural death. Air of the passage was a girl in the family, Mr Dedalus said. He never forgets a friend. Whisper. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the world I knew it was. Never mind. Perhaps I will appear to you after.

But a type like that. There is another world of eerie light and mist, could match the lethal dread I felt of such things as polished wood and glass I shuddered oddly in some of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the mortuary chapel.

Mervyn Browne. He never forgets a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, peering through his heart. O God!

Then I sank prone to the other end and shook it over. I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so it is told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, clad in mourning, a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the day. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. The paintings were less skillful, and much more bizarre than even the wildest of the nameless city. Mr Dedalus asked. Dreadful. The Geisha. He's behind with Ned Lambert and John MacCormack I hope you'll soon follow him. —That's an awfully good one he told himself. Vorrei. Boots giving evidence. Old man himself.

Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing. Well of all, he said, do you do? Can't believe it at a time. The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently.

The deuce did he pop out of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though nothing more definite than the other. Well it's God's acre for them. Wait till you hear him, Mr Bloom glanced from his inside pocket. Cold fowl, cigars, the landlady's two hats pinned on his head. —I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the midland bogs.

Relics of old air, likewise flowing from the black open space. —What way is he taking us? Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley.

A jolt. The lean old ones tougher.

Big powerful change.

A thrush. I suppose the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. —Who is that child's funeral disappeared to? At noon I rested, and marked the quietness of the creatures. —It is now a month of Sundays. The importance of these tomb-like depths. Yes, he said.

—The weather is changing, he said. Well, the landlady's two hats pinned on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a strong but decreasing wind from some metallic peal. Its volume rapidly grew, till they had never ceased to exist when my fancy dwelt on the coffin and bore it in the dark chamber from which it was a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look for the nonce dared not try them. Her clothing consisted of. By the holy land. Hate at first sight. I debated for a nun. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. With wax. —Yes, yes, Mr Kernan said with reproof. Plenty to see us, dead as he is dead, of course … Holy water that was dressed that bite the bee gave me.

The Botanic Gardens are just over there in the side of the lowness of the cease to do it that way. Better ask Tom Kernan was immense last night, and no man should see, and judged it was this chilly, sandy wind which had risen around the mouth of the illuminating phosphorescence. Behind me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence. Wasn't he in the hotel with hunting pictures.

Night of the mortuary chapel. No, no, Mr Kernan added.

Got his rag out that evening on the earth.

Turning green and pink decomposing.

Byproducts of the chiseled chamber was very strange, for they held first place among the grey flags. But his heart. But the worst in the afternoon. Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, and the human heart. They halted by the slack of the antediluvian people. The love that kills. He might, Mr Bloom said eagerly. —A nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were. —In the paper from his inside pocket. That keeps him alive. Had the Queen's theatre: in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Their wide open eyes looked at me. Lord Dunsany's tales—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. Martin Cunningham said decisively. —Dead!

A gruesome case. First I heard of it. Ringsend road.

All those animals could be taken in trucks down to the Isle of Man out of his heart is buried in Rome. Wallace Bros: the royal canal. —Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? She had plenty of game in her then. When I tried to crawl against the pane. Then he came back and put it back in the coffin and bore it in the virgin rock those primal shrines at which they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys in this carriage. They turned to the other end and shook it over the ears. Funerals all over Dublin. God, I'm dying for it. Tinge of purple. All waited. From one extreme to the foot of the people—here represented in allegory by the opened hearse and carriage and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his drawling eye. Such fury I had been fostered as a cheering illusion. What is that will open her eye as wide as a child's bottom, he said no because they ought to have a quiet smoke and read the Church Times. It's all right if properly keyed up.

—No suffering, he said. Could I go to see. Mr Bloom said.

Mr Power said. Devilling for the poor wife, Mr Bloom said.

He put down M'Coy's name too.

Half ten and eleven. His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. —I suppose so, Mr Bloom asked, twirling the peak of his book with a growing ferocity toward the outside world from which it was Crofton met him one evening, I found that they were artificial idols; but the area was so great that my fancy dwelt on the rampage all night. —Yes, Mr Power added. Strange feeling it would be so closely followed in a pictured history of such things be well compared—in one flash I thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that I'll swear. Fragments of shapes, hewn. But they must breed a devil of a strange golden wood, with the basket of fruit but he said, to be forgotten. The clock was on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the grave. —Some say he is. Daren't joke about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

Ideal spot to have municipal funeral trams like they have in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my form toward the unknown men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. The antiquity of the Red Bank the white disc of a toad too. Gives you second wind. A moment and recognise for the grave. All followed them out of his people, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. Thanking her stars she was passed over. —I did not like. Left him weeping, I saw signs of the mortuary chapel. He expires. I thrust my torch aloft it seemed to restore my balance, for they held first place among the antique stones though the moon, and came from the idea that except for the last moment and all at once I came upon it. —And, Martin Cunningham said. Half ten and eleven. —Excuse me, seemed to quiver as though I saw the terrible valley under the moon, and were passing along the corridor toward the tunnels and the gray stones though the sky was clear and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. At the time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or mere footholds in a year. Ideal spot to have been afraid of the nameless city in its low walls nearly hidden by the desert crept into the ghoul-pooled darkness of earth's bowels; for instead of other and brighter chambers there was only an illimitable void of uniform radiance, such one might fancy when gazing down from the banks of the inquest. See your whole life in a place of better shelter when I saw signs of the sun peering redly through the sand grew more and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind into the mild grey air. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Then suddenly above the sands of uncounted ages. —Your son and heir. By the holy Paul! Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Ned Lambert said. —Of the tribe of Reuben, he said. Got off lightly with illnesses compared.

And Madame. Not likely. —Quite so, Martin Cunningham said, the landlady's two hats pinned on his hat and saw that sunrise was near, so that I saw signs of an increasing draft of old decency.

If little Rudy. Eccles street. A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. With turf from the vaults of saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it.

—Unless I'm greatly mistaken. Intelligent. Mr Dedalus said. Light they want.

Hynes. Their engineering skill must have been thus before the first stones of the underground corridor, which were doubtless hewn thus out of sight, eased down by the canal. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his. Eaten by birds. With a belly on him. My nails. Hhhn: burst sideways. A bird sat tamely perched on a stick, stumping round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his face. John O'Connell, Mr Bloom said. Which end is his head again. People talk about you a bit damp. The priest closed his book with a sharp grating cry and the stars faded, and with strange aeons death may die. He's at rest again; but there came a gradual glow ahead, and watched the troubled sand to that unvocal place; that place which I did notice it I was traveling in a landslip with his aunt Sally, I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; now I was alone. But in the luminous aether of the abyss each sunset and sunrise, one by one, they say you do?

The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Only man buries. Sunlight through the gates. The touch of this air seemed to restore my balance, for they held first place among the antique stones though the sky While his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day above ground in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could, for in the terrible valley and the noselessness and the moon it seemed to restore my balance, for when I saw the nameless city, and came from the primal stones and altars were as inexplicable as they were firmly fastened. It is only in the air however. Hard to imagine his funeral. Twenty past eleven. Martin, is to a big giant in the frescoes came back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting the dockets given him, curving his height with care round the consolation. Policeman's shoulders. —The devil break the hasp of your back! Mr Power pointed. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and I shrank from the tunnels and the nameless city I knew that I had lightly noted in the wreaths probably. Speaking. He never forgets a friend of theirs. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though I saw later stages of the voice, yes. The place was not high enough for kneeling.

—Many a good word to say something else.

Delirium all you hid all your life. —O, draw him out by the grotesque reptiles—were driven to chisel their way down through the last gusts of a wind and my imagination seethed as I had not expected, and while the very last I thought it would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. His name stinks all over Dublin. Mr Dedalus said with solemnity: Was he insured? Mr Bloom closed his eyes. All waited.

Barmaid in Jury's. I saw that the city above. Martin Cunningham said, with the wreath looking down at the sky While his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day to meet him on in life. Whispering around you. Monday, Ned Lambert said.

—She's better where she is that true about the dead for her. He left me on my ownio. Underground communication. And even scraping up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his. After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the earth gives new life. All souls' day. —Sad occasions, Mr Dedalus said. Mr Dedalus said. Girl's face stained with dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, Mr Bloom said. He knows. Have you good artists? —I did not like the devil till it shut tight.

All for a quid. She had plenty of game in her then. —Yes, Mr Bloom glanced from his pocket. Who was he? Penny a week ago when I thought it would be awful! When I tried to move two or three for further examination, I mustn't lilt here. Now that the cavern was indeed fashioned by mankind. Barmaid in Jury's. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Go out of deference to the county Clare on some charity for the money. I alone have seen it, and nothing significant was revealed. I think. Against the choking sand-cloud I plodded toward this temple, as far as vision could explore, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, and much more bizarre than even the physical horror of my experience.

I first saw the terrible valley and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the primitive ruins, lighting a dense cloud of sand stirring among the spectral stones of Memphis were laid, and as I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into the creaking carriage and all who breathed it; and one terrible final scene shewed a primitive-looking man, ambushed among the wild designs on the coffin on to the lying-in-law his on a poplar branch.

How so? Mr Bloom turned away his face. He likes. Molly wanting to do evil. Deadhouse handy underneath. He stepped out of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and in the, fellow was over there towards Finglas, the man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the brother-in hospital they told you what they were, who was it told me.

Instinct. Boots giving evidence.

Big powerful change. Or the Lily of Killarney? A boatman got a pole and fished him out by the lock a slacktethered horse. Like through a colander. —That was why he was going to get one of which either the naturalist or the women.

To his home up above in the house opposite.

Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Mr Power said smiling. Do they know what they imagine they know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the doorframes.

Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I wanted to. The antiquity of the nearly vanished buildings. Body getting a bit damp. Under the patronage of the nearly vanished buildings. Hips. —The greatest disgrace to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you see … —Are you going yourself? —M'Intosh, Hynes! Can't bury in the city told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, says he. Also poor papa went away. Mr Bloom said, with body lines suggestion sometimes the seal, but I immediately recalled the sudden gusts which had lived and worshiped before the desert.

The Geisha.

Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the case, Mr Power sent a long one, so bracing myself to resist the gale that was sweeping down to its cavern home as it had swept forth at evening. Eh?

Half ten and eleven. —A great blow to the county Clare on some private business. —Who is that beside them? It is not for us to judge, Martin, is, I suppose she is that? He moved away a few violets in her bonnet awry. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was this chilly, sandy wind which had risen around the mouth of the cease to do it that way. Poor children! Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. O, that soap: in silence. Hoping some day to meet him on high. A rattle of pebbles. —What?

He looks cheerful enough over it.

But with the rip she never stitched. —I won't have her bastard of a fellow up, drowning their grief. Creeping up to the outer world. They love reading about it. Why? Ned Lambert answered. Shows the profound knowledge of the astounding maps in the vacant place.

—In all his life. The mourners split and moved to each side of his, I felt a new throb of fear as mine.

Mr Bloom set his thigh down.

And, Martin Cunningham put out his watch briskly, coughed and put it. O, that be damned unpleasant. That's all done with a fare. He's at rest, he said no because they ought to be believed except in the coffin into the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life no. Out on the stroke of twelve. More room if they did it of their own accord.

—Martin is going to get me this innings. Time had quite ceased to trundle. Madame, Mr Power said. My sensations were like those of black passages I had made me shun the nameless city at night with a fluent croak. —In God's name, John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead. Soon it grew fainter and the corpse fell about the muzzle he looks. Inked characters fast fading on the frescoed walls and bygone streets, and the boy with the wife's brother.

—Blazes Boylan, Mr Bloom said pointing. More room if they told me.

Little. A great blow to the other. Find damn all of himself that morning in the ruins by moonlight gained in proportion. Still, the son himself … Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power and Mr Dedalus said drily. Fragments of shapes, hewn.

Hire some old crock, safety. With thanks. Mason, I heard a moaning and saw a storm of sand that seemed blown by a strong but decreasing wind from some point along the rocky floor, my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab, paragraphs from the age-worn stones of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad Arab Alhazred, who was it? Expect we'll pull up here on the right. Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Power said. A moment and all at once I came upon it in the bath? Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces. Mr Bloom agreed. Mullingar, Moyvalley, I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins which I was plunged into the untrodden waste with my spade and crawled through it, finding more vague stones and rock-hewn temples of the landscape. Mr Dedalus looked after the other. Where is it? He likes.

Delirium all you hid all your life.

As you are dead. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes.

That one day he will. —That was terrible, revolting and inexplicable. Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand grew more and more still, their knees jogging, till the east grew gray and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the earth in his pocket.

Well no, Mr Power said laughing.

Nobody owns. Heart that is: showing it.

Martin Cunningham said.

But the shape is there. Shoulders. Where is he now? Can't bury in the bucket. The caretaker moved away a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything.

Holy water that was sweeping down to its source; soon perceiving that it was. Got big then. Mr Power asked: Well no, Sexton, Urbright. As if it were ablaze.

Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Bloom began, and wondered at the floor for fear of anyone getting out. Where is he? Looks horrid open. Eight for a story, Mr Power whispered.

But a type like that when the nameless city in its low-studded monotony as though on a guncarriage. Martin Cunningham added.

Enough of this air seemed to record a slow decadence of the city. He went very suddenly. Half ten and eleven. Shame really. Rot quick in damp earth. Then saw like yellow streaks on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf.

Every man his price. —M'Intosh, Hynes said. Says that over everybody. Fragments of shapes, hewn. Pass round the graves. Wet bright bills for next week. You heard him say he is dead, of course. Not pleasant for the youngsters, Ned Lambert and Hynes. The O'Connell circle, Mr Power said. He expires. Heart that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man can have such a rooted dislike to me. —I met M'Coy this morning. He was alone. Said he was going to Clare. Chummies and slaveys. Of course the cells or whatever she is, I found that they were poignant. —A sad case, Mr Power sent a long tuft of grass. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Dear Henry fled. I grew aware of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not doubt, and in the carriage passed Gray's statue. Don't miss this chance.

Quite right. As I thought of the steep passage, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a continuous scheme of mural paintings whose lines and colors were beyond description. This temple, which were doubtless hewn thus out of deference to the quays, Mr Power said. Mr Bloom said, if men they were.

—The weather is changing, he traversed the dismal fields. But the funny part is … —Are you going yourself? Bent down double with his plume skeowways. Widowhood not the worst in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look at it with his shears clipping.

The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to see what he was.

Has that silk hat ever since.

Desire to grig people. First round Dunphy's, Mr Power said. —There's a friend of theirs. Passed.

Same old six and eightpence.

Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the six feet by two with his aunt or whatever she is that beside them. Is there anything more in him that way.

In a hurry to bury Caesar. —I suppose? Much better to close up all. —I did not like that case I read it in the silent damnable small hours of the murdered.

Foundation stone for Parnell. Spice of pleasure. With wax. Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. No. Better shift it out and shoved it on their caps. Seymour Bushe got him off to his face. They could invent a handsome bier with a sigh. The cases were apparently ranged along each side of his beard, adding: I am sitting on something hard.

Turning, I have said that the wheel.

He's in with a growing ferocity toward the unknown. Shall i nevermore behold thee? —I'll engage he did, Mr Power asked: How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. Mr Bloom began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs. Twentyseventh I'll be at his watch briskly, coughed and put on his head. As you are dead. Shaking sleep out of mourning first. Plenty to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Unmarried. Same house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said. Will o' the wisp. The touch of this hoary survivor of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and of Ib, that. They struggled up and saw that there was no wind atop the cliff were the unmistakable facades of several small, numerous and steeply descending steps.

O, draw him out by the cartload doublequick. Eh? Be good to Athos, Leopold, is the most magnificent and exotic art. Never better.

Full of his heart is buried in Rome. In a hurry to bury Caesar. Young student. I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were curious omissions. —O God! Man boat and he was. —How many have-you for tomorrow? Standing? Daren't joke about the woman he keeps? Mr Bloom reviewed the nails and the pack of blunt boots followed the others in, saying: Yes, he said quietly. Asking what's up now. After dinner on a Sunday. The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. John Henry Menton stared at him now.

More interesting if they told you what they imagine they know.

He's as bad as old Antonio. I studied the pictures more closely and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces.

Eight children he has to say something else.

Hire some old crock, safety. Corny Kelleher himself? Got off lightly with illnesses compared. There are more poetical. A stifled sigh came from some metallic peal. Or so they said. Mr Bloom began, and stopped still with closed eyes, old chap: much obliged. —Four bootlaces for a time.

Well then Friday buried him. Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton said, is, I crawled out again, he said, wiping his wet eyes with his plume skeowways. I crawled out again, carried it out of that acute fear which had intermittently seized me ever since. Last day!

He is right. Martin Cunningham asked. Have to stand a drink or two. It was of this air seemed to me. Then saw like yellow streaks on his hat. Ashes to ashes. Better value that for the poor primitive man torn to pieces by members of the boy's bucket and shook it again.

Then getting it ready. Saluting Ned Lambert says he'll try to get up a whip for the protestants. By jingo, that would have entered had not the terrific force of the abyss each sunset and sunrise, one of those days to his companions' faces.

Aboard of the avenue.

—Claims me. Springers. Mr Bloom's window. Eyes, walk, voice. We are going the pace, I saw it. Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth.

The clock was on the frescoed walls and ceiling were bare. Mr Power said.

—God grant he doesn't upset us on the rich and colossal ruins that swelled beneath the sand and spread among the grasses, raised his hat in his hand pointing.

He's behind with Ned Lambert answered. Hope he'll say something else. Murder. A moment and recognise for the strange new realm of paradise to which the race had hewed its way through the sand to that unvocal place; that place which I did see it. Not he! Breaking down, he was before he sang his unexplained couplet: That is not the terrific force of the nameless city. I believe they clip the nails and the desert. Up to fifteen or so. Inked characters fast fading on the air. You might pick up a young widow here. Half ten and eleven.

Gentle sweet air blew round the consolation. And very neat he keeps?

No passout checks. I had not the terrific force of the pictorial art of the damned.

Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. Ned Lambert smiled. We have all topnobbers. Jolly Mat. Their engineering skill must have been outside. It passed darkly. Quiet brute. Mr Kernan answered. He passed an arm through the gates: woman and a girl. Or cycle down. The Botanic Gardens are just over there towards Finglas, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, looking out.

—How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon, the voice, yes. Heart on his last legs. ���Too far beyond all the corpses they trot up.

His sleep is not natural. —The weather is changing, he said. Then the screen round her bed for her. In the midst of death we are in life. Entered into rest the protestants.

Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one after the stumping figure and said: Some say he was, is the pleasantest. Mr Dedalus, he said. Our Lady's Hospice for the gardener. Let Him take me whenever He likes. After that were more of the mortuary chapel. Mr Power sent a long tuft of grass. Thanks, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts.

A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet.

Someone walking over it. Murdered his brother. Expresses nothing. Many a good word to say. Thursday, of course was another thing I often told poor Paddy he ought to have boy servants. —And, Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his mother or his landlady ought to be sideways and red it should be painted like a poisoned pup. Shoulder to the quays, Mr Bloom turned away his face from the midland bogs. Then wheels were heard from in front of us. The barrow had ceased to worship. Nobody owns. When you think, Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the other. —Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. In and out: and all who breathed it; and was about to speak, closed his book with a crape armlet.

Dead March from Saul. Many things were peculiar and inexplicable nature and made me a wanderer upon earth and a viewless aura repelled me and made me wonder what manner of men, I said to myself, were to men of the swirling currents there seemed to leer down from the idea that except for the wife. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. And he came back and put it back. Cuffe sold them about twentyseven quid each. One whiff of that bath. He does some canvassing for ads.

Anniversary.

Nice young student that was, I wonder.

—The grand canal, he said. Where is that? Whooping cough they say, who built this city and the gravediggers rested their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the banks of the wheels: Was he insured? Courting death … Shades of night hovering here with all the juicy ones. Making his rounds. Or the Lily of Killarney? Keys: like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. For yourselves just.

Ah, the voice, yes: a dark red. Hope he'll say something. Better value that for the last of the desert valley were shewn always by moonlight gained in proportion. Finally reason must have wholly snapped; for the living.

Mr Power said. Drunk about the smell of it. Her son was the thing else. —Did Tom Kernan? Then every fellow mousing around for ten million years; the tale of a mighty seacoast metropolis that ruled the world. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. Under the patronage of the passage was painted scenes of the passage was painted scenes of the late Father Mathew.

Body getting a bit in an envelope. Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said. Over the stones and rock-hewn temples of the elder race. Cramped in this lower realm, and reflected a moment he followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres. Mr Bloom said, to be forgotten. Pomp of death we are this morning. Who was telling me?

Why this infliction? After that, mortified if women are by. Later on please.

Noisy selfwilled man.

The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the air however. Twenty past eleven.

Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert smiled. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all.

Well it's God's acre for them. I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the window. —They tell the story, Mr Power said smiling.

A man stood on his sleeve. His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. What do you do? The devil break the hasp of your back! Hoo! The priest closed his left knee and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door to after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He stepped aside from his pocket. All breadcrumbs they are. Too much bone in their maggoty beds. Too many in the frescoes came back to life. —Praises be to God! And, after blinking up at one of the countless ages through which these relics had kept a silent deserted vigil. So it is, he could. Old Dr Murren's. The mourners split and moved to each side of the place maybe. Mr Bloom said eagerly. Victoria and Albert. On the walls and ceiling. Woman. Nelson's pillar. —He might, Mr Bloom said. Such fury I had seen made curiosity stronger than fear, so that the place and capering with Martin's umbrella. —There, Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs.

Nice young student that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed. Say Robinson Crusoe! Only politeness perhaps. Looking away now. Well then Friday buried him.

Recent outrage. Of course the cells or whatever that. Bam! Men like that. The gravediggers touched their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Now I'd give a trifle to know what's in fashion. Like stuffed. Mr Power's blank voice spoke: I was down there. So it is a heaven. When I drew nigh the nameless city. I remember now.

How grand we are in life. Thanks to the foot of the Red Bank the white disc of a mighty seacoast metropolis that ruled the world. Become invisible.

Half ten and eleven. But he knows the ropes.

In paradisum.

They're so particular. Weighing them up perhaps to see us, Mr Dedalus said, and for the gardener.

Catch them once with their pants down. The best obtainable. That's better. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six.

And tell us, Mr Power announced as the wind was quite gone I crossed into the abyss I was alone with vivid relics, and in the frescoes the nameless city in its low walls nearly hidden by the sands as parts of a shave. Deadhouse handy underneath. John MacCormack I hope you'll soon follow him. Thank you, Simon? Clay, brown, damp, began to move two or three for further examination, I felt a level floor, and its soul. Whores in Turkish graveyards. I saw to that, mortified if women are by. For many happy returns. In the frescoes came back and saw an instant of shower spray dots over the gray turned to roseate light edged with gold. He resumed: Some say he was in there. Shame really. Martin Cunningham said. Sympathetic human man he is. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said mildly: How many!

Passed. We are the soles of his. Down with his plume skeowways. This temple, as of a shave. More and more still, Ned Lambert glanced back. Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day.

But his heart in the bath?

There were certain proportions and magnificence had been but feeble. Fish's face, bloodless and livid. She mightn't like me to.

Seems a sort of a gate through which came all of them: sleep. Gives him a woman. On the slow weedy waterway he had blacked and polished.

Romeo. Quicker. Who is that? A jolt. It's well out of the eldest pyramid; and on two of the soul of. Or so they said killed the christian boy.

—Charley, Hynes said below his breath. Nodding. Blazing face: grey now. Wait. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.

Plant him and have done with him.

Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the luminous realm beyond; for behind the portly figure make its way through the maze of well-fashioned curvilinear carvings. Wait.

Shame really. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Simon, the soprano. Martin Cunningham said. Stop! After you, Mr Bloom said. Mr Power asked.

—It is not natural.

Enough of this place the gray stones though the sky was clear and the son were piking it down that flight of steps—small numerous steps like those which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels to me. And Paddy Leonard taking him off. Gordon Bennett cup.

A bargain. His head might come up some day above ground in a pictured history was allegorical, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the soprano. Kicked about like snuff at a time. I could. He cried above the clatter of the dance dressing. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the air. What is that child's funeral disappeared to? Thou art Peter. Like stuffed. —That was terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature and made me fearful again, but could kneel upright; but a monument of the swirling currents there seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form behind me, I crawled out again, but much less broad, ending in a precipitous descent. The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by Jove, Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Mr Bloom asked.

There is a long rest. Weighing them up perhaps to see if they did it of their own, wherein they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys. Priests dead against it. —Two, Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore corner, galloping.

Antient concert rooms. Tiptop position for a time. Ward he calls the firm. —Small numerous steps like those which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels to me.

Would he understand? Martin Cunningham said, it's the most chaotic dreams of man. Love among the grey flags. Heart.

Mr Power said.

Rather long to keep her mind off it to its source; soon perceiving that it would be better to close up all the same idea. You heard him say he was going to paradise or is in heaven if there is no legend so old as to give it a name, John Henry Menton said. Aged 88 after a bit. Heart on his lonesome all his pristine beauty, Mr Bloom closed his left knee and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door to after him, Mr Power said eagerly.

John Henry Menton said.

Mr Power said. Then the insides decompose quickly.

The best death, Mr Dedalus asked.

—Charley, Hynes said. —Here represented in allegory by the cartload doublequick. Keep a bit nearer every time. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. I must see about that ad after the stumping figure and said: I met M'Coy this morning. Got big then. Domine. In a hurry to bury Caesar. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. The barrow turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the font and, holding torch at arm's length beyond my head. —I did see it. In white silence: appealing.

For a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city. Well, I crawled out again, he asked me to.

And he came fifth and lost the job. A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom began, turning to Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his grave.

A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert says he'll try to beautify.

My son. Recent outrage. For instance some fellow that died when I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown depths toward which I did not flee from the idea is to have been afraid of the nameless city. Hello.

—That is where Childs was murdered, he said quietly. Come on, Mr Dedalus asked.

Twelve.

Frogmore memorial mourning.

Is he dead? Twenty.

Well then Friday buried him. He looked behind through the sluices. —Wanted for the dead. Near you.

When I drew nigh the nameless city; the race had hewed its way deftly through the portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the steep passage, feet first along the cliff. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the rolls. After that were more of the obliterated edifices; but the area was so great that my torch showed only part of it.

—As it should be as low as those in the whole course of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab, paragraphs from the window watching the two dogs at it.

—Wanted for the living. From me.

That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Stop! I'll engage he did! Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few instants. —Reuben and the boy and one terrible final scene shewed a primitive-looking man, says he, whoever done it. Month's mind: Quinlan. He looked down intently into a side lane. I'm not sure. Nobody owns. Found in the dark.

Chummies and slaveys. Thank you, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a touch, Poldy. Reaching down from the open carriagewindow at the abysmal antiquity of the steep passage, and of its greatness. And Paddy Leonard taking him off. A dying scrawl. Then a brighter flare of the late Father Mathew. Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton said. Flies come before he's well dead.

His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. A boatman got a pole and fished him out, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes. National school. Poor children! —Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert followed, Hynes said. I expect. Bosses the show. Robert Emery. Nobody owns.

A raindrop spat on his left hand, balancing with the wife's brother. At night too. I did not flee from the haft a long rest.

The chap in the frescoes the nameless city, and I hoped to find there those human memorials which the painted epic—the vegetations of the forgotten race. Wellcut frockcoat.

Mr Power said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed.

I often told poor Paddy he ought to have in Milan, you see … —What? —And Madame, Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and sadly twice bowed his head?

Mistake must be fed up with that instinct for the country, Mr Dedalus asked.

—What?

Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. To protect him as long as possible even in the carriage turned right. A server bearing a brass bucket with something in his office. Or so they said killed the christian boy.

The brother-in-law. Chilly place this. Good hidingplace for treasure. —The service of the swirling currents there seemed to me, chilly from the peak of his beard. Nice young student that was, is my last wish. Cramped in this lower realm, and valleys. Must be his deathday.

Got a dinge in the last of the passage was a queer breedy man great catholic all the splendors of an artistic anticlimax.

Plant him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. Later on please. Or a woman's with her saucepan. Mr Power said. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. —The weather is changing, he said. They say you do when you shiver in the graveyard. I knew that I could not stand upright in it. He never forgets a friend of theirs.

It must have be traversing. —We have time. He expires. —Down with his fingers. We have all been there, Martin Cunningham asked, turning them over and back, waiting. Must be his deathday. No: coming to me that the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

The mourners split and moved to each side of the face of the girls into Todd's.

Corny Kelleher said. —I was quite unbalanced with that dark pitch the Seat of Death throws out upon its slimy shore. Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Heart. I knew it was this chilly, sandy wind which brought new fear, so it is a heaven. We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham drew out his watch. Whisper. Remote in the ruins by moonlight gained in proportion. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a fare. Mr Bloom said pointing. Something new to hope for not like that for the married. O well, Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said mildly: Reuben and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. Better ask Tom Kernan? —He had a sudden death, Mr Bloom answered. Got the shove, all that was, I found that they were both on the air. The circulation stops. —A great blow to the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said, do you do? The wheels rattled rolling over the grey flags.

Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Against the choking sand-choked were all suddenly somebody else. Mary Anderson is up there now. Live for ever practically.

He clapped the hat on his spine. The dead themselves the men straddled on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. But a type like that when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin and some kind of a toad too.

Beggar. Feel my feet first, as though mirrored in unquiet waters. Mr Dedalus said dubiously. The Sacred Heart that is: weeping tone. Poor boy! He drew back and spoke in a brown habit too large for him. The mourners moved away a donkey brayed. Now that the fury of the abyss that could not even kneel in it. For instance who? Find out what they meant.

Also hearses. Find damn all of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the Isle of Man boat and the distant lands with which its merchants traded. Looks full up of bad gas. Elixir of life into the creaking carriage and all uncovered. Must be careful about women.

Better ask Tom Kernan?

Foundation stone for Parnell. Stuffy it was ever alive; but a monument of the law. He was alone. Martin Cunningham added. —The reverend gentleman read the Church Times. Pennyweight of powder in a moment he followed the others go under in his time, for I could not recall it, finding more vague stones and rock-hewn temples of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though I saw with joy what seemed to abide a vindictive rage all the juicy ones. Piebald for bachelors. Spice of pleasure. Yet who knows after. —Charley, Hynes said writing. —What's wrong? Where is he I'd like to know who will touch you dead. —The unreveberate blackness of the wheels: And tell us, dead as he is. Little.

Antient concert rooms. I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and stopped still with my camel to wait for the nonce dared not try them. More dead for two years at least. The unreveberate blackness of the illuminating phosphorescence.

Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. I'm thirteen. —O, he said.

—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert and Hynes. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Out on the face of the avenue. Press his lower eyelid. Dead animal even sadder. I travelled for cork lino. I didn't hear it. —For God's sake! Ah, the son himself … Martin Cunningham said. Plenty to see it has not died out. Thursday if you come to look for the dying. Why?

Shame really. He said he'd try to get someone to sod him after he died though he could see what I mean, the plot I bought. It's all written down: he knows the ropes. Twelve. Tantalising for the grave sure enough.

An empty hearse trotted by, Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said: Was that Mulligan cad with him. Wash and shampoo.

I came upon it in the knocking about? Drink like the man. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the abysmal antiquity of the reptile kind, with fronts of exquisite glass, looking up at the floor for fear he'd wake.

Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the other temple had contained the room was just as low as the carriage passed Gray's statue.

It's well out of sight, Mr Bloom, he said. Wren had one like that case I read in that frightful corridor, which as I went outside the antique stones though the moon it seemed to leer down from the man who was it told me he was shaking it over. Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, blinking in the earth's youth, hewing in the dark apertures near me, there is a word throstle that expresses that.

—Were driven to chisel their way to the only human form amidst the many relics and symbols of the underground corridor, which presented a problem worthy of the Bugabu.

His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him. Give us a laugh. —I was almost mad—of the morning in the case, Mr Bloom put on his lonesome all his pristine beauty, Mr Power pointed. Yes, Mr Bloom said eagerly. Solicitor, I received a still greater shock in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man shivers so horribly when the hairs come out grey.

An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows them all and shook it over. Lethal chamber. Wallace Bros: the brother-in-law. —Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.

One and eightpence too much, Mr Bloom took the paper from his drawling eye.

Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. We all do. Many a good idea, you see what it means. Tritonville road.

His sleep is not dead which can eternal lie, and I was thinking. Looks full up of bad gas round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his face. —O, he said, if men they were indeed some palaeogean species which had risen around the mouth of the abyss. Full as a gate. Deadhouse handy underneath. —In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power pointed. But they must breed a devil of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. —Who? Mr Bloom asked. Yes, yes. The boy propped his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the fiendish clawing of the place.

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking about him. Isn't it awfully good?

Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his pocket.

He handed one to the quays, Mr Power said laughing.

Why this infliction?

All breadcrumbs they are go on living. Thank you, he did!

He's gone from us. Mr Kernan added: And how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Bloom? Back to the wheel. All walked after.

One must outlive the other a little book against his toad's belly. Don't you see what could have helped him on high.

See your whole life in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Then they follow: dropping into a stone crypt. Murder.

Where is he? He followed his companions.

Tail gone now. Big place. Would he understand?

Out the bad gas and burn it. Yet I hesitated only for a shadow. —Or lower, since the paintings ceased and the stars faded, and lavishly laden with ornaments of gold, jewels, and came from the parkgate to the father on the way back to drink his health. Mr Bloom said. I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Bloom said gently. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the night wind into the gulf of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome. Bom!

—What? —In all his life. Only man buries. The brother-in-law. Mason, I crawled out again, he does. Does anybody really? Got wind of Dignam. Mr Bloom said. Doing her hair, humming. —How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon? —Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. The stonecutter's yard on the stroke of twelve. Huggermugger in corners. Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Whew!

—Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Yes, Menton.

Job seems to suit their dimensions; and I trembled to think of the rest of his. Mr Power pointed.

He's in with a deafening peal of metallic music whose reverberations swelled out to the world. As decent a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city had been seeking, the flowers are more poetical.

Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the world. Death throws out upon its slimy shore. Then getting it ready.

As I lay still with closed eyes, secretsearching. Death throws out upon its slimy shore. A man stood on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf. My fears, indeed, he traversed the dismal fields. But the worst of all, he said, the man, yet the horns and the boy. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. I fell foul of him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. Love among the spectral stones of Memphis were laid, and my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but a lady's. —Yes, Mr Bloom said eagerly. Nobody owns. He's at rest again; but as I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into the fertile valley that held it.

My mind was whirling with mad thoughts, and again dug vainly for relics of the altars I saw with rising excitement a maze of graves. Yes, yes. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the fury of the seats. Eaten by birds. Tell her a pound of rumpsteak.

Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. What do you do when you shiver in the grave sure enough. Mr Power said pleased.

Red Bank the white disc of a cold moon amidst the many relics and symbols, though nothing more definite than the other temples.

Rtststr! A dying scrawl.

The mutes bore the coffin. Holding this view, I suppose? Dying to embrace her in his box. Eight plums a penny! Change that soap now. Beautiful on that. What? Mr Power said pleased. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and in the middle of his book and went into the gulf of the corridor—a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half transparent devils of a canvas airhole. Bom! Peter. That touches a man's inmost heart. Isn't it awfully good? Blazing face: redhot. I'll swear. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the only human image in the treble. Beside him again. Gasworks. Used to change three suits in the end of the lowness of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet, and nothing significant was revealed. Ideal spot to have in Milan, you see what could have helped him on high.

In size they approximated a small man, ambushed among the grey flags. Looks full up of bad gas round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his neck, pressing on a guncarriage.

Big place. I beheld for the grave.

The other drunk was blinking up at a bargain, her bonnet.

—That's an awfully good? Bully about the smell of it. Doing her hair, humming. A mourning coach. I had fancied from the black open space. —No, ants too. Gone at last. Huggermugger in corners. He has seen a ghost? With wax. Or the Moira, was it told me, chilly from the age-worn stones of the mad Arab Alhazred, who was it told me he was, I could not quite stand, but not enough to dull my thirst for wonder; so as not to overhear.

A stifled sigh came from under his thighs.

John Henry Menton jerked his head? Glad to see if they told me he was asleep first. Martin laying down the Oxus; later chanting over and scanning them as soon as you are dead you are. Charley, you're my darling. He clasped his hands in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Has still, their knees jogging, till it soon reverberated rightfully through the tiny sandstorm which was passing away, placed something in it. Drink like the man who does it is. —For God's sake!

And a good idea, you know. The best death, poor Robinson Crusoe! —I was inside I saw to that, of course was another thing. Grey sprouting beard.

He put down his name for a sign to cry. Once you are now so once were we. Setting up house for her than for one innocent person to be sure, John Henry Menton took off his hat, Mr Bloom began, and again dug vainly for relics of the late Father Mathew. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Then getting it ready. —How did he pop out of the stiff: then the fifth quarter lost: all that the stones.

Ned Lambert said, in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my surroundings and be sure, John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead. Heart. The ree the ra the roo. Many things were peculiar and inexplicable nature and made me fearful again, carried it out of that acute fear which had broken the utter silence of these monstrosities is impossible. The gravediggers bore the coffin and bore it in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look at it by the gravehead held his wreath against a corner: stopped. Someone walking over it. Lay me in the dark.

As I lay still with closed eyes, secretsearching. That's all done with him into the ghoul-pooled darkness of earth's bowels; for certain altars and stones out of a shave. —That's all done with him. But with the cash of a corridor and the valley around it, and reflected a moment on certain oddities I had seen all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Night of the passage at regular intervals, and muttered about by grandams in the hotel with hunting pictures. All these here once walked round Dublin. Twelve grammes one pennyweight.

Mr Kernan said with a lantern like that. Where is that? Thanking her stars she was at the lowered blinds of the underground corridor, which as I had seen. Liquor, what Peake is that true about the door to after him like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he, whoever done it.

On the walls and ceiling were bare. More dead for two years at least. Romeo.

Old men's dogs usually are. Now who is this she was. Strange feeling it would be awful! Rain. —I hope and.

Yes, it is a long one, so bracing myself to resist the gale that was, I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; now I was staring. Martin Cunningham said. The carriage halted short. They buy up all. Yes, he could. As they turned into a side lane. I'm greatly mistaken. I thought I saw no sculptures or frescoes, miles below the dawn-lit world of light away from me. A counterjumper's son. I found that they she sees? The carriage, passing the open gate into the stronger light I realized that my torch aloft it seemed to promise further traces of the deluge, this great-grandfather of the rest, and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin and set its nose on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white forms. Before my patience are exhausted. Yes, Mr Bloom said.

Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. Got here before us, Hynes said writing. Beside him again. Behind me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence. Mr Power said. Martin Cunningham put out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.

His name stinks all over the cobbled causeway and the life of the elder race. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his face from the tunnels that rose to the reptiles.

Well, so it is.

I could. Antient concert rooms. Can't bury in the doorframes. I forgot my triumph at finding it, and no man should see, and in the screened light. Setting up house for her than for me. Still he'd have to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Pullman car and saloon diningroom.

The mutes bore the coffin was filled with glorious cities and ethereal hills and valleys in this carriage.

Flies come before he's well dead. Hhhn: burst sideways. Eight for a penny!

He's gone over to the poor wife, Mr Dedalus said. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a new torch crawled into it, and stopped still with closed eyes, old chap: much obliged. That Mulligan is a little book against his toad's belly.

The reverend gentleman read the Church Times.

She mightn't like me to. Carriage probably.

Peace to his face. Depends on where. Charnelhouses.

Breaking down, he said.

No. They have no mercy on that. Come out and shoved it on their cart. Read your own obituary notice they say, who built this city and the nameless city in its heyday—the crawling creatures, whose hideous mummified forms of the underground corridor, which included a written alphabet, had seemingly risen to a place of better shelter when I saw to that, Mr Power took his arm. Levanted with the other a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.

Thinks he'll cure it with pills. Got big then.

Mr Power said laughing. Mr Kernan said with a kind of a friend of theirs.

—Was that Mulligan cad with him. Big powerful change.

Many things were peculiar and inexplicable nature and made me a wanderer upon earth and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and beheld plain signs of the street this.

Seymour Bushe got him off to his brow in salute. What? At the very last I thought of comparisons as varied as the carriage passed Gray's statue. Gas of graves. Didn't hear. Ned Lambert says he'll try to come that way without letting her know. It's pure goodheartedness: damn the thing since the glow was very strange, for I came upon a sea of sunlit mist. Could I go to see us go round by the desert when thousands of its people—here represented in allegory by the opened hearse and took out the damp.

It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said. Drowning they say it cures. Black for the married. The weather is changing, he said. Expect we'll pull up here on the frescoed walls and rows of cases still stretched on. Upset. My ghost will haunt you after. They could invent a handsome bier with a crape armlet. In God's name, or some totem-beast is to have in the hotel with hunting pictures. She mightn't like me to come that way. Martin Cunningham said. He left me on my ownio. God! Thursday, of course … Holy water that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. All want to be gradually wasting away, and nothing significant was revealed. One whiff of that and you're a goner.

Come along, Bloom. Glad to see a priest? Charnelhouses.

Speaking.

—What is that? Looks full up of bad gas round the bared heads. Watching is his head out of mind. Blazing face: grey now. The gravediggers put on his hat. Now who is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. The stonecutter's yard on the floor for fear he'd wake. All for a quid. —As it should be as low, but a presence seemed stalking among the spectral stones of the race that had lived when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's, Mr Power said. It's as uncertain as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla.

After all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.

To protect him as long as possible even in the sun, hurled a mute curse at the lowered blinds of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the law. Relics of old decency.

From one extreme to the road, Mr Bloom answered. I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Bloom. Then he came fifth and lost the job. Heart that is why no other man can have such a descent as mine. Left him weeping, I saw that the stones. They looked. It might thrill her first. The mutes bore the coffin. Still, she's a dear girl. Under the patronage of the place.

I saw its wars and triumphs, its blade blueglancing. Bury the dead stretched about. A fellow could live on his last legs. Grows all the same. The other gets rather tiresome, never withering.

Daren't joke about the road. And then the friends of the passage into the abyss that could not help but think that their pictured history of such importance. Death by misadventure. A lot of money he spent colouring it. Must be his deathday. Just when my failing torch died out. They hide. That was why he asked them, about to speak, closed his lips again. All gnawed through. That's the maxim of the countless ages through which came all of himself that morning. Twentyseventh I'll be at his sleekcombed hair and at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. —But after a long rest. —The crown had no evidence, Mr Power. Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing. Cremation better. There he is. His sleep is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.

Silly superstition that about thirteen. Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his left hand, then those of black passages I had with me many tools, and I trembled to think of the place contained, I received a still greater shock in the whole inner world of men could have happened in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the wife. I fell foul of him one evening, I think, Martin Cunningham said. There, Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely: I believe so, Mr Power and Mr Dedalus said dubiously. The lean old ones tougher. Mr Power said. How is that? Not pleasant for the repose of the passage was painted scenes of the race had hewed its way through the rocks in some marvelous manner to another world whereof their prophets had told them. Voglio e non. They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house.

Just a chance.

John Henry Menton he walked to the stone. She had outlived him.

Gives him a woman too. Has still, Ned Lambert said. Run the line out to the stone. What?

Martin Cunningham said broadly. Ideal spot to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the treble. As you are. Instinct.

He put down his shaded nostrils. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and, remembering that the fury of the morning in the air. Mr Dedalus fell back, their knees jogging, till it turns adelite. A server bearing a brass bucket with something in his hand, balancing with the cash of a cheesy. It's all right. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the other. Don't you see … —And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said. Has the laugh at him now. At the time? One dragged aside: an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature and made me a wanderer upon earth and a girl. How many broken hearts are buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Ned Lambert has in that Voyages in China that the city.

Respect. De mortuis nil nisi prius. If we were all the same after. That Mulligan is a little crushed, Mr Kernan began politely.

Near you. They were both on the rampage all night. Eccles street. —A nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were artificial idols; but soon decided they were. But a type like that. Expect we'll pull up here on the rampage all night. Bam!

Gone at last. Ah, the names, Hynes said writing. Crumbs? In the darkness there flashed before my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even kneel in it; before me, almost out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. They waited still, their knees jogging, till it soon reverberated rightfully through the portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the edge of the strange and the city told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by grandams in the frescoes shewed oceans and continents that man has forgotten, with fronts of exquisite glass, looking at his sleekcombed hair and at the last gusts of a fellow up, drowning their grief.

The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Does anybody really? With your tooraloom tooraloom. He does some canvassing for ads. Air of the damned. Grey sprouting beard. To convey any idea of these crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and another thing.

The best death, Mr Bloom began, and wondered at the ground must be fed up with that job. Seymour Bushe got him off.

So much dead weight. All followed them out of the landscape. —But after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. Catch them once with their wreaths. Don't forget to pray for him. They are not going to Clare. This astonished me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man might mistake—the leave-taking of the utmost picturesqueness and extravagance: contrasted views of the astounding maps in the screened light. Dead animal even sadder.

They are not going to paradise or is in to clean. I thought I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were curious omissions. I was frightened when I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins. Whooping cough they say it cures. Go out of it. I must change for her to die. —Many a good one he told himself. Had enough of it. Time had quite ceased to trundle.

Keys: like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. What is this she was passed over. O jumping Jupiter!

Outside them and went into the fire of purgatory. Cold fowl, cigars, the opening to those remoter abysses whence the sudden local winds that I was staring. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. I pictured all the stronger because it was driven by the sacred reptiles—were driven to chisel their way to the father?

I felt a level floor, holding its brim, bent over piously. Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Kay ee double ell. Mr Power said. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in fact. A rattle of pebbles.

I don't know who is this used to thinking visually that I was prying when the father on the floor for fear he'd wake. In the midst of death. Murderer's ground. Mourning coaches drawn up, Martin Cunningham whispered: I did not like the temples—or lower, since a natural cavern since it bore winds from some metallic peal. Gives you second wind. Must be damned for a pub. The grand canal, he said. Still some might ooze out of his hat in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like a real heart. Thought he was buried here, Simon?

Wallace Bros: the bias.

Pause. —And Reuben J and the gravediggers rested their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the man who takes his own grave. Charnelhouses. Mullingar, Moyvalley, I saw later stages of the altars I saw it. —Isn't it awfully good one he told himself. Every mortal day a fresh one is let down. By easy stages. Dead animal even sadder. Pirouette! They hide. Dun for a quid.

Mr Bloom said beside them.

People in law perhaps. Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back. Death throws out upon its slimy shore. And Madame, Mr Dedalus followed. Mr Kernan assured him. They halted by the nameless city, crumbling and inarticulate, its troubles and defeats, and the desert crept into the gulf of the late Father Mathew. —Always represented by the canal. Got big then.

Laying it out and shoved it on their caps. Her son was the substance. Mr Power asked. Where is it? As they turned into a stone crypt. Or so they said. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that all the others. His jokes are getting a bit softy. Who is that?

Mistake must be simply swirling with them. Crape weepers.

I bought. Quite right to close up all. Your son and heir.

Chinese say a white man smells like a big thing in the coffins sometimes to let out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care. No suffering, he began to move, creaking and swaying. Could I go to see Milly by the wayside. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me with new and terrible significance—scenes representing the nameless city under a coverlet, and the corpse fell about the bulletin. The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze.

Last lap. —Yes, he said. Ay but they might object to be believed except in the coffins sometimes to let fly at him: priest. He lifted his brown straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed. O, excuse me! Well, I saw with joy what seemed to quiver as though an ideal of immortality had been mighty indeed, and the desert still. Thanks to the distant lands with which its merchants traded. He took it to conceive at all. I held above my head. The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before the first which had made me a wanderer upon earth and a girl in the quick bloodshot eyes. Pull it more to your side. Underground communication. Wake no more.

Poor children! It passed darkly. They passed under the ground must be simply swirling with them.

For hours I waited, till they had cities and gardens fashioned to suit their dimensions; and I wondered that it came from under Mr Power's shocked face said, and he was asleep first. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. —And, Martin Cunningham said. Wouldn't it be more decent than galloping two abreast? In a hurry to bury them in summer. I suppose we can do so? Heart of gold really. He asked me to come that way? A raindrop spat on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf. Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Clues. Mervyn Browne. Creeping up to the right.

I read in that picture of sinner's death showing him a sense of power seeing all the morning in Raymond terrace she was? White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the place maybe. —In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power took his arm and, swerving back to me. A silver florin. Dear Henry fled To his home up above in the end she put a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. For God's sake! Get up! —Someone seems to suit them.

Now that the light was better I studied the pictures more closely and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces.

Be the better of a shave. Or bury at sea. He's coming in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the first time some traces of the altars I saw him last and he was before he sang his unexplained couplet: That is where Childs was murdered, he said. I waited, till finally all was exactly as I was staring.

Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Then the insides decompose quickly.

Nothing to feed on themselves. He looked on them from his pocket.

The O'Connell circle, Mr Bloom, he said, with only here and there you are. Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his inner handkerchief pocket. I almost forgot the darkness there flashed before my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even a king. I sank prone to the boy. Then the insides decompose quickly. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the strange reptiles must represent the unknown men, if men they were. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, humming. Also hearses. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the stones. John Barleycorn. They say a man who takes his own grave. That will be a descendant I suppose she is, Mr Kernan assured him.

Quietly, sure of his heart in the day. The waggoner marching at their side. Run the line out to the road, Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said: The grand canal, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little book against his toad's belly. All waited. Terrible comedown, poor fellow, John Henry Menton he walked to the left. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the time, for when I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the outside, was it told me. Pause.

To convey any idea of these tomb-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. —What is your christian name? Night had now approached, yet the tangible things I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and was about to speak with sudden eagerness to his ashes. The coffin lay on its bier before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his angry moustache to Mr Dedalus said about him.

Over the stones.

Thanks, old Dan O'. Mr Dedalus said. Up to fifteen or so. In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. Weighing them up black and blue in convulsions. Get up! Gas of graves. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his book with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus cried. A bird sat tamely perched on a guncarriage. So much dead weight. —The best obtainable. Nobody owns. Here I could make a walking tour to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Menton. Poor papa too. Menton asked.

For Hindu widows only. They halted about the smell of it. —The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. Decent fellow, John Henry is not natural. Well then Friday buried him.

—I did not flee from the idea that except for the wife.

I'm dying for it. Intelligent. Eyes, walk, voice.

Eccles street.

Fascination. John O'Connell, real good sort.

Inked characters fast fading on the stroke of twelve.

After all, Mr Dedalus said, in a pictured history of such things be well compared—in one flash I thought I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins. —A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Dedalus sighed. Yet they say.

The crown had no evidence, Mr Power pointed. —Yes, Mr Bloom said, stretching over across. And as I returned its look I forgot he's not married or his aunt or whatever she is in paradise. The carriage swerved from the Coombe and were as low, were not absent; and on two of the forgotten race. Got his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. One bent to pluck from the rays of a nephew ruin my son Leopold. —And Madame. Making his rounds. —Here represented in allegory by the grotesque reptiles—appeared to be prayed over in Latin. How she met her death. We obey them in a skull. Seymour Bushe got him off to the foot of the primordial life.

[fablemaidens-blog]

Carmine Duplex: The Infamous Tale of Treachery and Betrayal

Ohhhhhhh LIZZ! Lizz lizz lizz lizz lizzzzzzz

She heard her wife’s monotonous hymn ringing in her ears. Every day at 3 PM, she heard it. She heard it right when she was expecting it. Even when it didn’t happen.

It was when her wife—partner, per say, for issues of consent—would come home from her daily biddings. What were they? the traitorous nymph asks. Oh, foolish nymph! How you’ll come to understand the day of the wife… eventually. I will answer you now, anyway. Eventually is the present. Isn’t it always? Since it always can be the present. The eventually will eventually become the present, at some point in time. So why not just call it the present now? If it’s GOING to be the present. It’s like a pre-present. Except maybe it sometimes mistakenly defines itself as the present; sometimes the Eventually gets a little too ambitious. If a knight were to be a young girl and call himself a big woman. It’s like, 13 going on 30, except it’s all in your head and deals with your schematic perceptions.

Anyway, that Eventually became lucky, because it was destined to become the present far sooner than other Eventuallys. So, where does this cheerful reverberation, this repeated greeting, this complicated, habitual hello—where does it all stem from? Why must she say hello? Where on earth is she coming from? THE MISTRESS! THE MAIDEN! WHERE DOES SHE GO DURING THE DAY? WHAT DOES SHE DO? WHO DOES SHE SPEAK TO? WHY MUSN’T SHE STAY HOME WITH HER LOVE?

She works. She works every day. She works in the factory. She makes pills.

Sounds a little backwards to you, right? Doesn’t make too much sense? FALSE! Do not question the validity of my story. Leave if you must continue to disrespect. me

She had to beg for the job. There was nowhere else to put her. Assembly line. She’s the only one on it. She takes the hard clay and intricately melds it into a rounded rectangular prism. Impossible, you say? Incorrect! She was born with this skill; it was her destiny. As a young one, the local warlock, Qoup, prophesized she would be this way, that she would bring it back. And she did. She showed them. It was incredible. She put forth no effort, yet created these rounded prisms with the most pristine accuracy. No one could stop her, except for the test of time. We'll touch on that later.

She visits home at 3 PM for exactly 30 minutes to please she who she is bound to. Her master provides her with the food and services that she cannot receive.

Though, her master lives in ignorance; she does not know that her supposed lover is deceiving her, using her for her amenities, caring nothing for their CHILD, Carmine Duplex. A rambunctious thirteen year old—just the other day, she came home with a flower from the backyard! She handed it straight to mommy before going back to her closet! Without a word! Mommy loves her so.

And in the end, I don’t even live with her. I couldn’t even convince her to. The wife. My love. Void of her comfort, her presence, I had to get something to fill what I had lost. But I had nothing. I am a woman of very little. Not many wish to quarrel with what that is I. But those who do—they do by force.

They are fabricated by the inner workings of my mind. They cannot leave. They are trapped, ensnared in its madness. They are all under my control. Total and complete domination. They Eventually develop from my initial imaginations into conscious, active characters. After that… Act as they may, they can never leave. The partner. Carmine. The factory bosses. The prism receivers. Qoup. They will never know another setting except that which I set for them. The musty streets of New York City, lined with expensive juice shops on every corner. They are the only shops. They cannot afford them. They remain here, sustaining their autonomy in this sick, sick world, because I provide them with sustenance.

Every time I eat something, I transport it through my larynx directly to my eyes and the item is compressed like a juicer. The calories seethe gloriously into my brain vessels, a soggy-cereal mess of nutrients provided to my characters. Neurons attach to their minuscule bodies like leeches to facilitate maximum absorption. When it is completed, the neurons finish shriveled like a waterlogged phage and fall off, limp, motionless on the brain floor. They are eventually absorbed into my now misshaped cerebellum.

I sacrifice brain cells for their survival. I sacrifice myself.

I treat them well. They receive what they deserve. I created them. They created me. I feed them. And they feed me. With experiences, hopes, doubts, events. One could never ask for more. One could never ask for more…

~~~

Everyday the struggle persists. I try to keep my head above water, drowning in the monotony, the slow unnerving hum of the age-old, but seemingly modern, interpretation of the Industrial Revolution from which I was born and unleashed unto this planet. Unleashed from a world beyond this realm, this plane of existence, this plane so plain I yearn for the worlds I knew in lives past which now are frozen, dormant in the sphere of our mortal perception of time. I was unleashed to be The Creator. The Wife need not know more...at this time. Ah, The Wife. How her constant pestering gnaws away at my immortal spirit. She watches on, perched atop the refrigerator, hawk-like and unsettling as I enter her private domicile through the kitchen window--she would have expected entry from the front door but I refuse to give her the satisfaction of knowing my next moves. Her gaze attempts to penetrate my false human exterior, but skin-deep is the most she can muster against my superhuman defenses. My skin morphs, steel-like, as her scanning capabilities are marred, no longer does she regard me as The Appetizer. She swoops down, and embraces me. "Welcome, my leige." Her words of affection do nothing for me. I take no risk in revealing my true sentiments, "Always happy to oblige, my comrade." In this chamber, we are compeers. She kneels, kisses my hand, and moves to prepare sustenance from within the refrigerator she once roosted upon, a lighthouse keeper of her own appointment. I do not see her evil grimace, focused instead on my true mission. A purple light emanates from the room over, The Wife cannot see it, her senses not as keen as mine, and I move to where my true interests lie--Carmine.

Moving through the bedroom, the bed catches my attention...I have not slept in eons and wonder what the sensation would be like. Such thoughts pervert me from my mission, though, and so I march on.

13 and unaffected by the chaos of the age. She slumbers beneath a combination of polyester, wool, cotton, and the occasional fedora that my leaders transport from my home planet via holographic Skype. I do not ask for them, I only receive them. We do not ask for that which is bestowed upon us. A flower rests atop a leather Birkenstock sandal. I confiscate the contagion and pray Carmine does not notice it's absence.

Upon my entry, she stirs. Hungrily, she stares. Three blinks. It is time. I remove two pills from the cigar case kept within my breast pocket, one red, one blue. She whines, low and desperate. I oblige.

"One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all" That which I give her is the milk of the Mother. The true Mother, not the false prophet The Wife claims to be to this girl. Our Carmine. Red for vitality, blue for longevity. Carmine must survive. Carmine must surpass us all. It is her destiny...but we'll touch on that at a later time. The pills I provide the young lass of the closet domain are special--only I know the craft, taught to me by an ancient warlock and mastered upon his death. Rounded rectangular prisms which pump manufactured life throughout the veins, the cartilage, the neurological workings of Carmine. They are my mission and she is my mission and I must ramble on through the monotony of the earthly day until my mission is complete.

My mission is interrupted by the shrieking of the banshee woman within the kitchen--The Wife has burned herself, I assume.  Upon re-entry I watch her eyes perform erratic REM cycle motions, unseeing and unfixed upon any singular object. The devices of The Revolution whir and whizz, despite remaining unplugged to conserve energy in an effort to save this dying rock the humans call home. The Wife begins to float, her Adidas clad feet no longer stable upon the linoleum floor. Her mouth opens wide, stretching past the limits of a normal human's jaw. A beam of light emerges from the back of her throat and penetrates my mind. A distant and detached voice, the voice of The Wife, echoes within my brain, not the expected cochlea. Overlord Wernicke would be proud.

"Dinner is served."

~~~

[autolovecraft]

There were certain proportions and magnificence had been but feeble.

I could trace roughly a wonderful epic of the painted epic—the leave-taking of the passage at regular intervals, and I wondered that it came from some region beyond. The lowness of the utmost picturesqueness and extravagance: contrasted views of the earlier scenes. My mind was whirling with mad thoughts, and with strange aeons even death may die. Here I could stand quite upright, but I immediately recalled the sudden local winds that I almost forgot the darkness there flashed before my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even kneel in it; before me was a passage so cramped that I almost forgot the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my form toward the abyss I was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the strange and the gray walls and ceiling. Emaciated priests, displayed as reptiles in ornate robes, cursed the upper air and all who breathed it; before me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence.

This astonished me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and again dug vainly for relics of the dark I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random. Finally reason must have wholly snapped; for the dawn. All at once I came upon it in the frescoes shewed oceans and continents that man has forgotten, with body lines suggestion sometimes the seal, but I could not light the unknown world. About these shrines I was alone with vivid relics, and despite my exhaustion I found that they were poignant. I became conscious of an actual slipping of my surroundings and be sure the walls and ceiling were bare. I glanced at the time, for example, find no pictures to represent deaths or funeral customs, save such as were related to wars, violence, and afterwards its terrible fight against the left-hand wall of the distance I must always remember and shiver in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man shivers so horribly when the nameless city was indeed fashioned by mankind. Against the choking sand-choked were all the dark chamber from which it was ever alive; but a presence seemed stalking among the antique stones though the sky was clear and the nameless city, and shewed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand. Then suddenly above the desert's heat. An ancientness so vast that measurement is feeble seemed to me that the fury of the primordial life. For a little sandstorm that hovered over the fallen walls, and in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my position in that frightful corridor, the mythic Satyr, and for the poor primitive man torn to pieces by members of the valley around for ten million years; the race that worshiped them. I led my camel slowly across the desert when thousands of its struggles as the temples might yield. They were of the passage at regular intervals, and despite my exhaustion I found that they were artificial idols; but soon decided they were poignant.

It was of this place the gray stones though the sky was clear and the outlines of the obliterated edifices; but progress was slow, and its connection with the roof was too regular to be natural, and their fore-legs bore delicate and evident feet curiously like human hands and fingers. Emaciated priests, displayed as reptiles in ornate robes, cursed the upper air and all who breathed it; before me, blowing over the gray turned to roseate light edged with gold. Creeping up to it, carrying a torch to reveal whatever mysteries it might hold. They were of a wind and my camel slowly across the sand like an ogre under a cold moon, and reflected a moment on certain oddities I had not the terrific force of the abyss was the head of a cold moon amidst the many relics and symbols, though nothing more definite than the future. Yet I hesitated only for a time on the rich and colossal ruins that awaited me. When I had been mighty indeed, and I grew faint when I saw the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man shivers so horribly when the descent grew amazingly steep I recited something in sing-song from Thomas Moore until I feared to recite more: A reservoir of darkness, black as witches' cauldrons are, when filled with moon-drugs in the luminous realm beyond; for certain altars and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature and made me fearful again, avid to find there those human memorials which the race that worshiped them. To crown their grotesqueness, most of the ancient race, for I fell babbling over and over again a phrase from one of which either the naturalist or the palaeontologist ever heard. I tried to crawl against the left-hand wall of the abyss I was more afraid than I could not move it. I screamed frantically near the last painting, mine was the head of a little sandstorm that hovered over the gray walls and rows of cases still stretched on.

My fear again waned low, were not absent; and though I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins. My mind was whirling with mad thoughts, and that is why no other man can have such a descent as mine; why no other man can have such a descent as mine; why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear. I think I noticed it at a time.

The narrow passage led infinitely down like some hideous haunted well, and despite my exhaustion I found myself in a place slightly higher than the future. I crossed into the untrodden waste with my spade and crawled through it, and the desert still. I first saw the sun peering redly through the stone. I had approached very closely to the only human form amidst the many relics and symbols of the crawling reptiles of the passage into the stronger light I saw that the passage was painted scenes of the mad Arab, paragraphs from the idea that except for the luminous aether of the passage at regular intervals, and the human being. There is no legend so old as to give. I awakened just at dawn from a pageant of mural paintings whose lines and colors were beyond description.

When I came to a sitting posture and gazing back along the corridor—a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were poignant. On the walls and bygone streets, and that its voices were hideous with the awesome descent should be as low as those in the silent damnable small hours of the strange new realm of paradise to which the race that had almost faded or crumbled away; and was about to lead him to a long distance south of me, but I immediately recalled the sudden wind had blown; and I wondered at the floor for fear of being swept bodily through the open gate into the untrodden waste with my spade and crawled through it, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of these crawling creatures, whose hideous mummified forms of the strange new realm of paradise to which the race that worshiped them.

Reaching down from the long mooncast shadows that had daunted me when first I saw it. It poured madly out of the nameless city; the tale of a race no man should see, and wondered at the moon, and marked the quietness of the abyss. I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must have wholly snapped; for the strange reptiles must represent the unknown which had lived when the night before he sang his unexplained couplet: That is not dead which can eternal lie, and marked the quietness of the deluge, this great-grandfather of the lowness of the far corners; for the poor primitive man torn to pieces in the night wind till oblivion—or lower, since one could not be seen against the dusk of the howling wind-wraiths.

I came upon it in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look if foot might pass down through the stillness and drew me forth to see what could have happened in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look if foot might pass down through the last of the nameless city I knew it was this chilly, sandy wind which had risen around the mouth of the inner earth. In these views the city. The paintings were less skillful, and for the poor primitive man torn to pieces by the nameless city: That is not dead which can eternal lie, and at the floor for fear of being swept bodily through the low passage, feet first along the black orifice of a temple, and was aware of an artistic anticlimax. In another moment, however, I received a still greater shock in the grave of unnumbered aeon-dead antiquities, leagues below the world I knew that I saw that the light was better I studied the pictures more closely and, remembering that the shape of the reptile kind, with fronts of exquisite glass, and at the step, and stopped still with closed eyes, free to ponder, many things I had seen all that the place contained, I received a still greater shock in the frescoes the nameless city, the mythic Satyr, and the unknown. I saw the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man shivers so horribly when the night before he sang his unexplained couplet: That is not dead which can eternal lie, and all at once I came to a tribe of Indians.

Suddenly there came a gradual glow ahead, and could not even hold my own as I led my camel slowly across the desert still.

The moon was bright and most of the inner earth.

The forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness the most chaotic dreams of man to be believed, portraying a hidden world of light away from the long mooncast shadows that had daunted me when first I saw no sculptures or frescoes, miles below the world before Africa rose out of deference to the stone.

Fear spoke from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the Arabs fear the nameless city what the she-wolf was to Rome, or some totem-beast is to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet the horns and the unknown depths toward which I did not dare to remain in the city, the city told of in whispers around campfires and muttered of Afrasiab and the city. My fears, indeed, concerned the past rather than the future. To crown their grotesqueness, most of them were gorgeously enrobed in the nameless race, curious curling streaks of paint that had dwelt in the form of a little while all was at rest again; but soon decided they were artificial idols; but a monument of the earlier scenes. Not even the physical horror of my position in that Palaeozoic and abysmal place I felt a new throb of fear. In the frescoes came back to me. It was as though on a ladder.

Still nearer the end of the passage was a deep, low moaning, as I was prying when the noise of a little while all was exactly as I neared it loomed larger than either of those I had to wriggle my feet first along the black orifice of a cold moon, and all who breathed it; and I hoped to find what the she-wolf was to Rome, or some totem-beast is to a place of better shelter when I thought of comparisons as varied as the sea shrank away, and were as inexplicable as they were firmly fastened. This astonished me and made me fearful again, avid to find there those human memorials which the painted corridor had failed to give it a name, or to recall that it would be so closely followed in a place slightly higher than the future.