
Should this fiend pass through a living being, it rakes out the soul. A dark creature that descends like a winged thing in the night. A thin vapour engulfs and speeds it. It is never seen but by those who follow it. Those that see it hate it, and shun its noisome strain. Those that cannot see shun it wholly, for its shadow makes them blind. Sometimes it speaks, though it speaks only in hateful accents like that of the Toa. The black winged monstrosity laughs in mockery of all mortals, and strives ceaselessly to hold the kingdom of its horrible kingdom on unknown Kadath in the cold waste, from which no ray of light ever springs. Mutation, decay, and dissolution make it more and more like the Toa-Mutation, and newer horrors arise to mock it. Yet through all these horrors dwells the pure Toa-Mutation, which reveres the ancient gods and the sealed trap door to the outer darkness. V That is how I came to know the nightmare to which my dreams led me so long ago. That is how I came eventually to shun the subterrene stone city and its abhorred toad-beast, and to seek rest in the warm white mist outside the vast, high-pitched, pipe-walled monaster.