1 Humble Beginnings

Delirium.

A single word to perfectly illustrate where my mental faculties lay. Barren, with my senses of touch, taste, and hearing disappearing. Normally I would rather find myself throwing fits, screaming at the unfairness of it all. However, I strangely couldn't find it in myself to care, though I knew it couldn't be from some pesky mind control or mental influence on my mind.

All it took was for my mind to go through my memories to justify my general contempt towards my previous life. It all felt so foreign, and therefore so benign in retrospect. I looked through it from the end rather than focusing on it from the beginning as if I had my whole life ahead of me, but now I was dead. I was sure I was, considering my quite brutal end at the hands of... now that's something. Proof of subtle mind manipulation

. So you can let me keep my general personality and memories but can't let me remember my death? Seems illogical. Fuck.

I heard a faint and distorted chuckle from my musings. Frankly, it sounded like more of a gurgle than what you would call a laugh. Seems like I wasn't alone either.

"Well, when you think about it, everything is illogical. Only when you bring meaning to it, does it make a difference in making sense or not. Basic knowledge I no doubt know you have by now." A simply horrifying being softly floated down towards me, a conceptually daunting figure of cosmic horror descended with such a nonchalant and unnerving demeanor.

If I had eyes, which I'm pretty sure I don't, I would most likely be clawing them out of my skull as soon as I laid sights on the abomination before me. The reality was unfathomable, simply all-encompassing.

What I would only describe as creation's most fear-inducing mass of jet-black tentacles, seemingly going on till the farthest reach of my vision. What I could only make out to be sharp, jagged edges of what was supposed to be teeth, were constantly orbiting around and through an indefinite sea of organic matter. As it couldn't get any more threatening than what its appearance held honor to, the mass of this... mess, opened.

The abundance of tentacles parted like a sea, revealing the behemoth of the creature's tongue. Its razor-sharp teeth gleamed with the absence of light. Its eyes are an expanse of sickly green and purple, piercing through my sense of security.

It only took a few more agonizingly long minutes, minutes that I wasn't sure were hours or millennia, that this abomination chose to speak.

"Names. One of the bases and cues for human interchange and connection. Your variety has come up with numerous unanticipated stories, hypotheses on the known universe, and even yourselves. The matter in which you're comprised of. However, one of these stories had the unlikelihood or misfortune of actually being a known and unassailable reality. The Outer Gods."

Holy shit.

"So I assume you're aware of the stories of H.P Lovecraft?"

I could not articulate, and I could not fathom. Yet somehow, from an indiscernible miracle, I managed to utter one maddening sentence.

"Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes."

The voice, now a thundering bellow of immense pressure spoke again.

"You comprehend me sufficiently. Mortal."

....

In all my most impetuous ideas why did I ever assume it was a presentable idea to speak an omnipotent being's name out loud in its presence? What resulted in my shortsightedness was my soul burning. As if my soul was unhurriedly boiling on the cusp of evaporating.

It felt as if the very essence of who I was, what made me myself was slipping away in the most painful melting pot ever conceived. "You have the temerity, yet I remain unoffended. You were unaware." As soon as I heard the now more serene voice, It sounded faintly sorrowful. As if it was reminiscing on a memory. No doubt from eons in the past.

My suffering instantly receded. Although promised as it did, to make my death a transient one if I ended up denigrating the cosmic order once again. I steeled myself to take a look at the abomination before me but was met with a human appearance.

Perhaps more accurately, close to human as possible. A long head of black hair, accompanied by a pitifully sickly complexion. Roots of veins spread all across its pale and bloody body as its plain black eyes, sclera and all were analyzing me. The two appendages on its back resembled the black and unhealthy versions of the human lungs.

It stood still, as if like a statue, but the black lungs, maybe 10 feet in diameter were in a cycle of perpetual breath. Although not unlike the lungs of this condition, sounded colorless. After seeing this, what was most unnerving to me was how tragically beautiful she looked. An angel corrupted by the repulsiveness and wickedness of the apprehended omniverse.

The being beamed at me with recognition. "You glanced at my true shape and didn't go mad. Infinitely impressive. In all my existence as the king of the outer gods, I have never encountered a human, nor any other being for that matter, that can withstand the notion of my existence. Although you can't emit my name, you are bound only by your mortality. I have to concur, you are a special one."

I didn't know how to process this. A myriad of information and revelations incessantly assaulted my mind, trying to make sense of it all. I knew it was all pointless in the end though. Who really could guess why everything came to be? This world, or perhaps this plane that we're on?

Azathoth looked at me with interest, preparing to speak once more "You died an astonishingly human death. Betrayed by your family, forced to meander from place to place. Streaks of homelessness, places to never call home. You encountered friends, and significant others in your life, but they all ended the same way. Betrayal or estrangement. You never got to achieve your dreams. Now tell me, Yumiranj Concordia. What will your wishes be?"