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.

The Glass from Leng

Abdul Alhazrad sat cross-legged on the rapidly cooling desert sands. Night had fallen and he awaited the rise of the moon. Beside him petals of Black Lotus smoldered in a bronze brazier crafted in sunken Lemuria. The mad poet forced his brain to ignore the monstrous shapes formed by the lotus smoke. His attention was focused on a chunk of glass held in his hands.
    He had obtained the glass from an eyeless beggar on the outskirts of Damascus who claimed it to have been created in the fabled land of Leng and that it gave a man visions of things beyond imagining even a glimpse of the abyss beyond space and time wherein dwells the daemon sultan Azathoth. The old man had fallen on hard times and in the end had traded the glass shard and ancient scrolls written in the high Aklo tongue for a few crusts of moldy bread and a skin of sour wine.
Abdul had spent a week studying the scrolls and waiting for a full moon, now he was ready to look through the veil of time and space.
   The moon rose and the blue light streamed through the glass into Alhazrad's left eye, then deeper into his mind. Within the glass Alhazrad beheld wonders of primal ages, glorious cities and kingdoms so ancient no scholar could remember their names. Further back he saw the first men, shaggy brutes who sacrificed their children to winged things in exchange for knowledge of fire and primitive magic. He saw the ancient Serpent Men hissing incantations and mixing vile potions. He beheld the continent of Rl'yeh in its colossal glory, hurriedly looking away when Great Cthulhu turned to meet his gaze.  
    Then the poet cast his vision far out into the silent void, past Yuggoth and Xoktli, past Hali with its slimy churning lake, to the very rim of space and time to the place where dwells Azathoth. The great eye of Azathoth opened to stare back at him. With that vision Alhazrad hurled the glass from Leng away and ran screaming into the blue-litten dunes for the eye of Azathoth held no ultimate wisdom only idiocy and cosmic madness.
  

Pnakotic Fragments

   Beyond the worlds we know, beyond Yuggoth at the rim, beyond Almuric where savages battle endlessly and beyond Nh'ule of the black towers, there rolls in a strange orbit the world god Gauru-Yoth . The world thing circles seven stars, three are red and old, four are dim and older still. The seven stars hold Gauru-Yoth in check. But even the stars die and one of the seven shall someday go cold then shall Gauru-Yoth be free to roam among the stars and devour all life. Azathoth has power to bind the world thing, but Azathoth is mad.

   By certain formula a skilled wizard may open the gate to Gauru-Yoth and if the Guardian of the Gate deems the traveler worthy he may go forth onto the surface of that sentient world. There he will be watched by countless eyes and will hear the screams of countless mouths, all beings that have been consumed by the world god in ages past. Some of those voices will speak and the adept may learn powerful formulae and lore of elder times. Some of the voices are simply mad and will plead for release from Gauru-Yoth or plead for the mercy of death. But their is no release and there is no escape in death, for all that Gauru-Yoth consumes lives on in his substance.

  When the adept prepares to return to his world the Guardian of the Gate will bid him to feast upon the flesh of Gauru-Yoth, and thus will the adept become one with the world god and carry the essence with him. Over time the body of a man will take on the cast of Gauru-Yoth and become an unspeakable thing, taking on the appetites of Gauru-Yoth, ravenously consuming man and beast alike. After much carnage this thing will grow to a great size and the world god will call him back, there it will sink into the mass of Gauru-Yoth and live on eternally.

 ( from the Book of Veiled Gods, author unknown)