The Curse From Beyond

I've managed to contain the infection using the bracer of Inragos and the Voorish Chant but I fear it is only a temporary solution.
 "from the notebooks of Dr. Eugene Kantorius"

Skarl the Drummer

OF SKARL THE DRUMMER

When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI had made the gods and Skarl, Skarl made a drum, and began to beat upon it that he might drum for ever. Then because he was weary after the making of the gods, and because of the drumming of Skarl, did MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI grow drowsy and fall asleep.
And there fell a hush upon the gods when they saw that MANA rested, and there was silence on Pegana save for the drumming of Skarl. Skarl sitteth upon the mist before the feet of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, above the gods of Pegana, and there he beateth his drum. Some say that the Worlds and the Suns are but the echoes of the drumming of Skarl, and others say that they be dreams that arise in the mind of MANA because of the drumming of Skarl, as one may dream whose rest is troubled by sound of song, but none knoweth, for who hath heard the voice of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, or who hath seen his drummer?
Whether the season be winter or whether it be summer, whether it be morning among the worlds or whether it be night, Skarl still beateth his drum, for the purposes of the gods are not yet fulfilled. Sometimes the arm of Skarl grows weary; but still he beateth his drum, that the gods may do the work of the gods, and the worlds go on, for if he cease for an instant then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more.
But, when at the last the arm of Skarl shall cease to beat his drum, silence shall startle Pegana like thunder in a cave, and MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI shall cease to rest.
Then shall Skarl put his drum upon his back and walk forth into the void beyond the worlds, because it is THE END, and the work of Skarl is over.
There may arise some other god whom Skarl may serve, or it may be that he shall perish; but to Skarl it shall matter not, for he shall have done the work of Skarl.

"The Gods of Pegana" by Lord Dunsany

The Scrolls of Druuna Cosaan

"And the great King Khossus looked into the glass from Leng, and therein beheld strange stars and further to strange worlds where life took shape only glimpsed in the nightmares of men. Thus did Nyarlathotep touch the mind of Khossus as he gazed upon the things beyond, and ruin came unto the land of Sohure."
(from the Scrolls of Druuna-Cosaan)

The Rituals of Hali

The members of the cult of the Yellow King groveled before a roaring bonfire. The cult leader, an enigmatic old man named Prynn, chanted aloud an incantation from The Rituals of Hali, an ancient book written in a tongue that only a handful of scholars across the world could read. That book revealed the path to eternal life in the mortal shell and the awful price to be paid .
Blood ran freely from the runes Prynn had carved into his chest. The wounds that would scar not just his flesh but his very soul and forever mark him as a servant of the Yellow King.
 Prynn completed the incantation and the old wizard grinned as the avatar of the Yellow King emerged from the flames. It's shape was hazy and indistinct, Prynn had the impression of great height, ragged yellow robes, and an ivory mask covering the face. The creature bent close to whisper something into Prynn's ear. Without hesitation Prynn sank to his knees before the entity and presented his wrists. A blade flashed from somewhere within the Yellow King's tattered robes to slice across the outstretched wrists and more of Prynn's blood splattered the ground. The cult leader lifted a quill with numbing fingers and signed his name in blood on the outstretched palm of the hideous thing. His name was but one of many, most of them in languages forgotten before the first stones were laid in Sumeria. Prynn fell to the ground, fainting from blood loss.

The Yellow King turned to face the grovelling cultists and their ecstasy turned to horror as he assumed his true shape to begin the feast. The screams lasted long into the night.

 Prynn awoke the next morning amid the butchered remains of what had been twenty foolish humans. I didn't matter, he had been reborn as a servant of the Lord of Hali and granted one hundred years of life until the stars wheeled around and the time came to renew his pact with the Yellow King. So would it be forever until he failed to pay the tribute of blood and souls his terrible master required. Prynn hid the Rituals of Hali, the book must be preserved for he knew his name would not be the last written on the hand of the Yellow King.

Arkham Expedition

Arkham Massachusett's Miskatonic University launched their third and final Antarctic Expedition in 1937. The project was organized to search for traces of a pre-human civilization, long thought to be centered in the frozen continent according to certain passages of the fabled Necronomicon and Pnakotic Manuscripts. The expedition was funded by a generous grant from the Rothwell Institute for Theosophical Studies and while most of the participating scientists considered the mission to be complete quackery the opportunity to explore the antarctic region was impossible to pass up.

Contact with the group was lost almost immediately, a hastily organized rescue party recovered a few pieces of the expedition's equipment at the base camp, but no bodies were ever found and adding to the mystery; certain notes, photographs, and specimens were withheld from the general public. After a lengthy court battle with the Rothwell Institute over the ownership of the materials, these items were ordered sealed in the vault at Miskatonic for 100 years. The artifacts of the lost expedition remain the subject of much speculation and rumor.

 

The Black Lotus Rituals

   Abdul Alhazrad was pleased with the spot he had chosen to perform the Black Lotus Ritual. It was a one room hut on the edge of the wastelands. Once the home of a madman who wandered the hills talking to shadows and oddly formed rocks, that hermit had disappeared one night during a sandstorm and the place had been shunned since. The hut had a single window facing south and that too was a good omen; for as a boy Alhazrad had glimpsed an ice bound mountain in the grip a fever dream and had known it was in the southern most reaches of earth. Perhaps the visions that the Black Lotus granted would allow him to see that mountain again or even the things that slumbered beneath it.

 

    Alhazrad seated himself in the midst of a complex series of circles and mystic symbols drawn in white chalk on the floor. He chanted the Dho-Na formulae as he lit the brazier. The dried Black Lotus began to smolder and lazily the blue smoke rose, tendrils coiling and twisting like serpents. As the smoke drew near his face, Alhazrad inhaled deeply.

 

   The lotus fumes struck his brain like thunder, he had brief but terrible sensation of falling down an endless tunnel, then he was standing, staring at his still chanting body, Alhazrad's astral form had been freed from the cage of flesh. He turned toward the window and could see countless paths leading from it. Alhazrad stepped through and began to travel.

 

   He flew through nearer astral realms and beheld spirits of the dead, some lost in  false bliss and others lost in equally false torment. Those realms could not hold him and he probed beyond the nearer realms and glimpsed the maelstrom of time itself. Lean and hungry Hounds of Tindalos stalked the edge of the maelstrom, he spoke to those things, telling them the time and place to slay his earthly enemies. That vague scent was enough for the tindalosi, they leaped into the vortex to find their prey.

    Alhazrad guided his spirit sideways into the lands of dream. There he marveled at great shantaks on the wing and was briefly entertained by the antics of playful zoogs. Then he watched as the zoogs devoured a lone traveler and his amusement became revulsion.

    He left the dreamlands and returned to the plane of earth. He sent his spirit to the very bottom of the sea where he stood with Mother Hydra and her daughters before the sunken tomb of Great Cthulhu. He felt a call from the sepulchre and he entered within, his spirit passing through the stone like mist. There he beheld the corpse of Great Cthulhu, a mountain of alien flesh that was dead but still dreaming. That dreaming essence of Cthulhu flowed out to touch him and something attached itself to Alhazrad, pain ripped through both his astral and corporeal forms.

     The agony shattered the spell and sent the sorcerer's soul crashing back to his body. Alhazrad  came to his senses with the morning light, the black lotus had long since burnt out, the sigils and diagrams on the floor were smudged from the convulsions that had wracked his body through the night. But something had changed in Alhazrad, as though a veil had been lifted from his eyes, he perceived certain angles were corridors leading to other worlds where other things gazed hatefully upon mankind. The were also changes in his physical form, but Alhazrad decided it would be best to hide those from curious eyes and bound himself with rags as though he were a leper. For those new parts of himself fought for control and they were so very hungry.

 

Spawn of the Windwalker

 
I am the howling wind of fear.
I am the frost that brings starvation.
Who calls me with the words older than mankind?
Ia IT-AH-Qwa
Ia Shatukk ng'liu
Ia Ki-Nah-uk
Ia IT-AH-Qwa
Who calls me with an offering of flesh?
I am the Wind-Walker.
The frozen dead follow in my footsteps. They come to devour the living.

(Inscription from a menhir discovered on Ellesmere Island, translated from the Aklo by Professor Ben Crawford)

Necronomicon pages referencing human sacrifices made to the Spawn of the Windwalker by primitive tribes

Windwalker cult artifact in Miskatonic collection

The Temple of the Worm

"Out of the temple the monstrous dweller in the darkness had come, and I, who had expected a horror yet cast in some terrestrial mould, looked on the spawn of nightmare. From what subterranean hell it crawled in the long ago I know not, nor what black age it represented. But it was not a beast, as humanity knows beasts. I call it a worm for lack of a better term. There is no earthly language that has a name for it."
 The Valley of the Worm by Robert E. Howard

The Arkham Witch Box

In the spring of 1692 a woman named Keziah Mason was tried for witchcraft in Arkham, Massachusetts. The old woman was accused of being in league with the devil and many strange artifacts were found in her home and submitted as proof of her crime. Mason confessed freely to witchcraft and declared the various artifacts to be gifts from her infernal mentor, a being she referred to as "Nyarlathotep" or "The Dark Man".
 Several witnesses swore to have seen corpses walking in the forests near Mason's home and when questioned about this necromancy Mason claimed the Dark Man had given her a magical formulae that allowed her to trap the souls of dead men into a box and raise their rotting corpses to be her servants. The transcript of her trial even states that audible moans, wails, and hoarse whispers were heard to issue from the witch box.
Based on the overwhelming evidence and Mason's own confession, she was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. However the convicted woman somehow escaped on the eve of her execution, that same night the witch box and her other possessions also disappeared from a locked room in the local church.
 The story might have ended there had not the witch box been recovered in 1939 during the demolition of a long abandoned farmhouse near Arkham. The item was found in the cellar of the old house near a pit containing the remains of twenty four human beings, some of these cadavers were in a skeletal state and dressed in 17th century clothing while others appeared to be much more recent. The disinterred corpses were assumed to be the work of a grave robbing cult, and since none of the remains could be identified the case was quickly closed by the local authorities and the bodies reburied. The witch box was placed in the care of Miskatonic University and has remained there since.

In the Temple of Yezyud

The sorcerer Ludvig Prynn had traveled to the temple of Yezyud , in the library of that foul temple was a book written by a madman named Abdul Alhazrad, a book called the Necronomicon by some mystics and Prynn intended to learn the secrets of that dreaded tome. The journey had been difficult, for not only is the land of Yezyud barren and inhospitable, it is veiled by magic and many who wander into that place never return. But the sorcerer had prepared well and made his way to the temple with little trouble beyond maintaining control of the four apprentices who had accompanied him, they sensed the strangeness of this place and desired with all their hearts to flee. Only fear of Prynn had stopped them from bolting, that and the certainty that they could never find their way back to the caravan route as the stars that shone above them were abnormal and the night in this land seemed so much longer than the days.

The priests of Yezyud guarded Alhazrad's book and it would be difficult to gain their trust, only a scholar who humbled himself before their terrible god and gave proper sacrifice would be allowed to pass the great iron door and enter the library. Prynn had studied the lore of Yezyud and he knew what was expected of him; he allowed the priests to cast his four apprentices into the sacrificial pit and sang praises to the huge, many legged thing called Yezyud as its tentacles drained the screaming victims of their bodily fluids. In a final abomination the wizard went into the pit and offered the monster a taste of his own blood to seal the pact.

The reward was great, Prynn was granted one full day to study the Necronomicon. In that time he intended to absorb all the eldritch knowledge his brain could bear. The iron door swung open and closed swiftly behind Prynn, his shaking hands unlocked the ancient book and he began to read. An hour later his screams began, followed by sobs and pleas to open the door. But the servants of Yezyud paid no mind and the door was not opened until the first rays of dawn.

Prynn strode forth with a strange light in his eyes that never left him for all of his days. The Necronomicon had opened his mind to realities he had glimpsed only in Black Lotus induced nightmares, beings from beyond had spoken to Prynn through those ancient runes and he was no longer a mortal man. Without speaking a word Prynn left that same day, his weary camel suddenly skittish of the man it had carried across the barrens to this unholy place.

The priests of Yezyud went on with their normal affairs; stalking the hills for sacrifices to feed their gluttonous god. But curiously, Yezyud retreated to the honeycomb of caves beneath his temple and did not emerge to feed until a fortnight later, when Prynn had passed far from the hidden land of the Yezyudites.

Prophecies of Pnom

   For a time Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones will be freed from their tombs to prey upon the herd of mankind. In their fear and madness the remnants of humanity will call upon their Elder Gods to save them, but those gods are weak and fearful, and they will not leave Kadath to face Great Cthulhu.

  In this time the crypts under the Monastery of Tsan-Chan will give birth to the Avatar of Nyarlathotep that is to be known as the Prince of the Black Flame. He shall inhabit a body sewn piecemeal from age old corpses and cover himself with yellow robes to hide his decay, only those with the third eye will see his crown of black fire and wings of black flame.

    The Avatar will cause the stars to change their course, then will Cthulhu and his spawn be made to retreat to their tombs and be sealed again, dead but dreaming. All men will turn will turn to serve the Avatar and he shall build a great empire to cover seven tenths of the earth. Mighty altars will be set for the Outer Gods and they shall run red both day and night. Elder Seals shall be broken and the demons beyond Kadath set loose on the world to be worshipped and given all manner of sacrifice.

   In the far reaches of Kadath will the Elder Gods of man cower, for the world will no longer be theirs. In time they will be forgotten by all men. Their names not written down on any parchment or carved upon any tablet they will grow old to become mere shadows, eternally whispering of all they have lost.

("Prophecies of Pnom" as translated by Prof. Christian Morgan)

The Dhole Rituals

   In primal times the men of Lemuria served the outer goddess Shub-Niggurath, she who is called the Dark Mother of a thousand young.  A great temple was built to honor the goddess and her jade altars were stained red with the blood of human sacrifice. The terrible first born Children of Shub Niggurath came to dwell in the forests of Lemuria and these places were made sacred to them, these things spawning abominations with beasts and even upon the daughters of the lemurians. For their veneration of the outer god the Lemurians were rewarded with lush harvests and became wealthy beyond all other tribes of men.

  Then the Picts came to Lemuria in their long ships decorated with skulls of men and  beasts. The Picts were mighty warriors who acknowledged no deity save the war-god Cruuach, who had decreed that the world belonged to those with the will and strength to take it. In the field of battle they slaughtered the Lemurians and even the abominations of the Dark Mother fell to their spears, for in those days Pictish wizards had knowledge of the Seal of Koth which made iron as poison to those things from outside.

    The Lemurian priests begged Shub-Niggurath for aid. In a single fortnight they sacrificed a thousand virgins in the garden of the great temple, the ground become as red mud, soaked with blood that nourished the strange and unwholesome plants that grew there. At last the Dark Mother appeared to them, she came in a form so exquisite the young acolytes gouged their eyes from the sockets, wishing her beauty be their last sight. The Dark Mother spoke, "From across the void I have watched these foul men defile my land and slay the children of my own blood. It shall end now. I shall give to thee formulae to rouse the Dholes from their sleep in the deep earth, let those devouring worms feast and cleanse the land". The Dark Mother laid her hand upon the head of the groveling archpriest, words older than the stars flowed into his mind. He fell to the ground numb with knowledge.

   The archpriest was alone when he awoke; Shub-Niggurath had taken the other clergy and acolytes as tribute. The high priest took hammer and chisel to carve the alien words that gnawed at his mind, setting them forever into the temple walls. Then he traveled to the edge of the pictish camp as his god had instructed. He could hear the useless cries for mercy from his countrymen as the Picts cast them alive into flaming pyres, hatred overcame fear in the archpriest and he at last spoke aloud the formulae that would call up the terrible Dholes.

      It was so; the titan worms rose and swallowed the screaming Picts. But their hunger was not satisfied, they consumed all the men and beasts of that ancient land, till nothing of flesh lived in Lemuria. Only at the oceans did the Devourers stop, for the mystery of water is beyond the mind of the Dhole. The Devourers turned away, burrowing through space, time, and dreams, back to their home deep beneath the Crypts of N'kai.

 For eons the land was empty of living things but in time men returned to the Lemurian continent and inhabited the ruins of the previous race. Wisely they sealed the Temple of Shub-Niggurath and when that land sank beneath the waves the Dhole formulae was lost in that forgotten temple on the ocean's floor.

Demoness of the Wastelands

Abdul Alhazrad was dying of thirst, he had wandered into the great desert searching for a nameless city of antediluvian kings and swiftly became lost in that endless waste. His supplies and camel had disappeared in a sandstorm nearly four days gone and now it seemed his doom was upon him, but a whisper carried on the hot winds led him forward;
Come to me, wanderer.
Would you dare gaze upon me?
Come to me,
burn in the fire of knowledge and beauty.

     After a long nightmare of sun, sand, and misery, Alhazrad stumbled inside the gates of a ruined city. The ancient demoness Ereshkigal greeted him and restored his strength with words of healing and honeyed wine of no mortal vineyard. In return she bade Alhazrad to remove the hundred binding runes that the Elder Gods had written upon her flawless body. The glyphs held her to the dead place, punishment for the abominations she had led her worshippers to perform in primal ages. Fearing the wrath of the Elder Gods even more than the seductive demoness, Abdul refused . 

 Ereshkigal offered to trade him knowledge of many unspeakable demons for her freedom. The mad arab's lust for arcane secrets overcame his fear. He agreed and bade her speak.

 
   For two days and nights Ereshkigal sang to him. Her songs were older than mankind, they told tales of the Great Old Ones; Tsathoggua, black toad of the abyss; Yig, father of serpents; Ahruman, who is called the lord of corruption and Pazuzon who breathes the black wind that kills men and beasts; even whispering of Yog-Sothoth, who is the gate and the key; of all these and many others she sang .

  By the third day Abdul could bear no more as his brain seethed with things no mortal should know, he begged the demoness to be silent.

   

   Then Ereshkigal demanded her payment, she gave Alhazrad ink and quill that he should mark through the runes that held her to a dead and forgotten place. But he betrayed the demoness, inscribing yet another binding to her perfect skin and then fleeing for the city gates. Ereshkigal's voice turned to a roar of curses and she prophesied that the knowledge she gave Abdul would lead to his terrible demise. Alhazrad stole a single glance over his shoulder at the horror the Ereshkigal had transformed into. Then he ran harder, praying his heart would burst and save him from the memory of what he had witnessed.

   Alhazrad was found days later by a caravan, screaming at shadows and frothing like a mad dog. When he recovered his sanity, Abdul put to paper all he had learned from Ereshkigal. Secrets that would eventually reward him only with madness and pain.

Necronomicon Tales 3

    Of all the curses known to the sorcerers of elder lore, the curse of Mgnalah is the most vile. First the magus must obtain some part of the victim, a lock of hair or even a drop of spittle will serve as a link. Then a deep cave is found for Mgnalah will not enter where the light of the sun has touched the earth. Next is is drawn the seal of Mgnalah upon the earth and the link placed atop it. Then the incantations are recited in a whisper, for Mgnalah hears whenever his name is spoken and there is no need to shout.

    Seeping down from between the spaces we know will come Mgnalah, searching for his prey. The old one will take root within his host and begin to grow, consuming flesh and mind both. In time the wretched remains will resemble nothing of this earth and mumble only of strange and terrible visions. In the end nothing human will remain, only a fragment of Mgnalah that will crawl away in search of new flesh to devour that it might grow into a greater abomination.

(From the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazrad)

Necronomicon Tales 2

 Abdul Alhazrad cursed the luck that led him to this fate; he would die in a stinking tent listening to the nerve wracking cry of a baby in yet another tent. Alhazrad had been traveling alone, his camel laden with plunder he had found in various long forgotten tombs. He proved a tempting target for bandits. They had ambushed him as he crossed a dune and sank an arrow into his left side just below the ribs. He cut his treasure pack loose and flogged his camel like a madman, seeking to escape the thieves. The desperate plan worked, the bandits ceased pursuit to gather Alhazrad's goods and he rode on until the camel dropped dead from the many arrows it had recieved.
  Weak and delirious, Alhazrad had wandered on foot for two days, then an outrider for a nomad tribe found him. The strange desert folk spoke no tongue that Alhazrad was familiar with but they were kind in their fashion; they had no method to treat Alhazrad's wounds so they merely provided him a tent that he would at least die in some small comfort and privacy.
On this third night the wound in Alhazrad's side exuded a foul odor and with each breath he could feel the sting of the barbed arrowhead, for certain this hot night would be his last.
   The moon reached it's zenith and a cool breeze whispered through the nomad camp. A woman stood at the flap of Alhazrad's tent. She was tall and dark, clothed in gossamer robes that concealed nothing of her icy beauty. She asked Alhazrad's permission to enter and he gave it gladly.
   She spoke, "Would you desire to live, Abdul Alhazrad?"
  "What fool does not," Alhazrad replied.
  The Dark Woman commanded, "Then take up quill and record my tale in the olden runes, for I know you as a sorcerer versed in such things."
The Dark Woman begin her story and Alhazrad could not have resisted even if he had the desire to do so. She dipped the quill into his oozing wound and bade him to inscribe the tale in his own blood. She began her story and Alhazrad wrote every word, pain and fear of death forgotten, replaced with wonder.
  The Dark Woman told Alhazrad of the early days of man, she spoke of the wondrous place those first people were given and how the crimes of a few caused that place to be taken from them. The worst of the disobedient ones were cast out, cursed, and forgotten by the light. Doomed to wander forever, becoming monsters and breeding monsters. She spoke all the night through and the moon was almost gone when she finished her tale.
  Alhazrad was fading fast and he feared the Dark Woman would betray him. But she spoke, "Fear not sorcerer, this is not your time to die". She struck faster than cobra, driving her fingers into the wound, when she pulled them free the dripping arrowhead was in her hand. The Dark Woman smiled and for some reason it terrified Alhazrad more than the death. She spoke once more, "Rest now, and take my story back to the land of men when you awake", and left the tent silent as a stalking panther.
  Alhazrad awoke midday, his wound had closed and the infection had cleared. The camp was quiet, even the noisy baby had apparently decided to nap the day through. He stumbled to the nearest tent, he would thank these simple people and be on his way. No answer came to Alhazrad's hail and so he peered into the tent. Alhazrad fled screaming to the next tent and then the next. But in each he found the same thing, skeletons of a tribe long dead and forgotten.

The Shoggoth Formulae

Using the cryptic formulae found in Von Juntz's "De Vermis Mysteriis" and seemingly inert tissue samples from Miskatonic's ill fated 1937 antarctic expedition; I have at last achieved success in the creation of shoggoth protoplasm. However, the protoplasm grew far more quickly than was expected and within seconds had multiplied into a pulsing mass several yards across, filling the laboratory with blindly flailing tentacles.

Shoggoth Formulae

Fortunately I was able to leap into a protective circle I had prepared beforehand according to Von Junt's specifications and was protected from the ravenous thing. My trusted assistant Conrad was not so lucky, several pseudopods wrapped about his legs and dragged him directly into the central mass where he was quite noisily digested.
While the creature was occupied I tossed some high voltage cables in the central mass and threw the switch simultaneously reciting Alhazred's "Voorish Chants". The combination of electrical and eldritch energies proved sufficient to boil the horror down to a greasy liquid. The resultant citywide blackout was not wholly unexpected but I am fairly certain the blundering authorities will never trace the source of the disturbance to my estate.
"Excerpt from the notebooks of Dr. Eugene Kantorius"

Shoggoth Tissue Samples gathered during Miskatonic University Antarctic Expedition of 1937

Necronomicon Tales

Abdul Alhazrad had made his camp away from the rest of the caravan. Such was normal for the wizard but this night his behavior was different, he had carefully unrolled a cloth embroidered with circles and mystic symbols, placing it precisely on the ground so that the glyphs aligned with certain stars. Sitting in the midst of the cloth he burnt noxious powders and began to mutter incantations in barbarous tongues.
  The other travelers assumed the heat had driven him mad, there was nothing else unusual about this night except perhaps the overly noisy bugs that droned constantly. Suddenly Alhazrad covered his eyes as though he had seen something he could not bear. Almost at that instant one of the caravan drivers dropped to the ground, his mouth opened impossibly wide and the droning bug sound issued forth combined with a bloody gurgle. Then others began to fall in the same fashion.
  Alhazrad was curled in a fetal position, praying to dark gods to hold off the nightmare he dared not look upon. The wizard clasped his hands to his ears but he could not shut out the sound of screams, ripping flesh, and above all the the insect droning.

  Morning came, the sun's light shown upon the caravan revealing the aftermath of Alhazrad's conjurations. Of the caravan not one shred of flesh remained, only the bones of men and camels scattered across bloody sand. Abdul Alhazrad gathered his belongs and set out afoot. He had made a bargain with dark powers and kept it, the Swarm of Nebros had been fed and if he had any regrets for this deed his face did not show it.