The Island of the God
Fast by The Nymbh is an island of strange aspect, and it is called Mysmath. Mysmath resembles the weird, bleached, many-eyed skull and subjacent corpus of the Monster-God Phlōst, and that is for a very good reason—for it is the fossil of the god Phlōst, still rooted to the body of Physmia, many fathoms below, where he stood whilst battling the lesser gods many aeons agone. And atop the weird convolutions and bizarre and grotesque protuberances of Phlōst’s skull, the men of Mysmath have builded the city of Mysmath, which is sometimes a rival, and sometimes an ally, of the men and city of Tymgath.
And the men of Mysmath builded their city from the myriad small bones and fragments of fossilized biology, that may be found within the eye-sockets and other excavations that riddle the skull of Phlōst, and that once doubtless housed organs of strange and outlandish purpose. And the men of Mysmath delved deep into the recesses of Phlōst’s skull, seeking new materials wherewith to build, and new chambers wherein to dwell—and there is a legend on Mysmath, that these presumptuous men burrowed too far. It is said they tunneled deep into the center of Phlōst’s head, and broke one day after much toil and trouble into a vast cavern. And they discovered in that chamber a living, pulsing brain yet quick with the vital principle, and still nourished by warm blood and the various humours attendant to the living organism. And it is said those men heard a strange voice in their minds, speaking no language they knew, and yet which they somehow understood; and it is said some of those men went mad, and never returned. And the men of Mysmath wisely walled up the entrances to that immense chamber, and ever since they have made diligent sacrifice to the great god Phlōst, and cultivated his worship with every mark of sincerest reverence.
And it is said that the men of Mysmath suffer sometimes strange dreams and nightmares, that have as their theme the desire for a cataclysmic revenge against the lesser gods—in thunder and fire and blood— and the compelling urge to re-clothe the fleshless, fossil corpse with living integument, and the multiform organs of life, and to walk forth once more upon the sleeping bulk of Physmia, and to sow fear and terror amongst the creatures of that aqueous planet.
For the Monster-God Phlōst is the god of hatred and vengeance and all the reviled passions indwelling the human breast. And it is prophesied that Phlōst shall one day live again, ere Physmia wakens from Her slumber. But that shall not be for many millions of years— and the men of Mysmath continue to live and love and die, nothing worried.
The Thing That Dove
One day the men of Tymgath beheld a strange thing.
The emerald rays of the Green Sun danced in scintillant joy upon the wavelets of the ocean, as though they reveled in the last minutes of their life, whilst that orb sank slowly into the eastern seas; and they mingled weirdly with the lurid red gleam of the Green Sun’s faithful companion, The Phao, that forever circles the Green Sun like the mewling calf of a skyskimmer. And that is when the men of Tymgath beheld the Thing, approaching from the sun-kissed waters of the distant east.
They apprehended it at first, did the men of Tymgath, as a curious wave—as a mighty upswelling of the ocean waters did the Thing at first appear. But how queer was that wave! It rose above the waters like a great mound, as it were a planet or a moon did emerge from the Deep, or mayhap budded from the sleeping bulk of Physmia Herself. Yet the mountain of waters, that foreran the Thing, did seem as though it moved—as though it swelled and coursed and roved and drove toward The Nymbh.
And there was one in Tymgath whom men called The Myrion, and she was a woman of great insight and learning. The Myrion kenned the wherefore of the wave that approached, and bade the men of Tymgath beware, for there were Beings in the ocean, said she, whereof the men of Tymgath knew naught, and whose ways and appetites were strange and mysterious. And there was a man, who had anchored his airship for the night above Tymgath, and whose vessel was equipped with navigational telescopes, and this man espied a Fin emerge from the mound of waters — and it was the merest part of the strange anatomy of the Thing That Approached.
And as the Thing came ever onward, the men of Tymgath grew fearful, and they said amongst themselves: “The Thing has come to eat of The Nymbh—it is one of the monstrous offspring of dead Phlōst; it comes to eat of The Nymbh, and I read the death of us all in that mound of waters that approacheth.” And there was profound lamentation in Tymgath that night; and the fleet of airships that ever hovers about her living spires during the night hours, like the moon-flying Imbh-People who ever flit about the calyx of the God-Flower, departed hastily for the safety of the skies in a very body, for the wise merchants that helm them had no wish to yoke their fate unto the city, and The Nymbh, whose doom seemed swiftly approaching. For surely the Thing was big as a moon is big, and so slight a morsel as The Nymbh must scarce suffice to assuage its monstrous appetite—for the myriad commensals of The Nymbh must be involved in the cataclysmic consumption.
And the Architect, who sits ever in the Myriopod, and trains his telescopes upon the crown of The Nymbh, and the City of the Droad that lies within, marked that the waving, fleshy tendrils of The Nymbh beat the thin upward air with an unwonted agitation, and the great stalk bent but slightly, as if The Nymbh observed the approaching Thing with some degree of trepidation. And the men of Tymgath felt the movement of The Nymbh, and their terror trebled in proportion.
And out of the crest of the onrushing wave arose a terrifying flurry of waving feelers or palps, that beat the sea into a very froth, and men knew that the Thing grew excited in anticipation of the imminent feast. And many were the men of Tymgath who committed suicide that evening—for it is a terrible thing to be devoured by a monster, as all the men of Physmia know. And now the men of Tymgath knew that their fate was sealed, for the immense Thing suddenly disappeared—the feelers and palps submerged, and the Fin slid silently beneath the foam, and the mound of waters slowly subsided, when it was yet a score of miles away. And they each understood therefrom that the Thing dove, and would soon devour The Nymbh, and all that was on it.
And they waited…and they waited…and they waited…
And the Green Sun and The Phao disappeared beneath the eastern waters; and the moons of Physmia shone queerly upon the eerily quiet waves of the night-shrouded world. And they waited…they wondered what it would be like to be engulfed by the maw of the Thing, and digested in the belly of a moon-sized monster. A slight surge of water washed into the harbor of Tymgath—it was all that was left of that great, forerunning mound of water, that harbingered the approach of the monstrous Thing.
But of the Thing itself, the men of Tymgath learned nothing.1 The Nymbh was not devoured, that night, and the teeming folk of Tymgath were spared the doom that had seemed so inevitably theirs. None saw where the Thing went, nor whether it appeared on the opposite side of The Nymbh.
All that was known (and it was enough for the relieved men of Tymgath), was that the Thing dove, and that—upon that night, at least—it chose not to feast upon The Nymbh, or Tymgath, or the distant City of the Droad.
[We hope you enjoyed these two strange tales of the strange, alien world of Physmia. Please join us in the next issue of The Florilegium of Phantasy, for the first of a two-part horror tale from Julie Jaquith’s “Casebook of the Mandeville Society.”]
It is said, among the civilized races of the planet of Physmia, that the monsters and the giant beasts of the sea are the sacred offspring of the God Physmia Herself. Wherefore, it is the injunction of the divines that they may not be destroyed by the stratagems of men. The oceans are the domain of the Monsters, and when men essay the roads of the sea, then are they given to know the littleness of their empery.