The Mountains Of Madness
CHAPTER VI (Part 1)

It is infuriating to give such a detailed and sequential account of our odyssey in that ancient, dead brick honeycomb; that terrible nest of the secrets of the elders that now reverberate for the first time, the, after innumerable times, down to the footprints of a human. This is especially true because so many terrible plays and revelations come from the mere study of mural carvings that are everywhere. Our flashlight photos of the engravings will help prove the truth of what we are now revealing, and it is unfortunate that we do not have a larger film stock with us. Because of this, we sketch a rugged notebook with certain features that stand out after all of our movies have run out.

The building we entered was one that was large and elaborate, and gave us an impressive idea of the architecture of that nameless geological past. The inner partitions are less massive than the outer walls, but to a lesser extent are very well preserved. The complexity of the labyrinth, which involves a strange difference in the level of the floor, marks the entire setting; and we should have been lost from the beginning but because of the trail of torn paper left behind us. We decided to explore the older upper part, because it rises upwards in a maze about 100 feet away, to where the top level of the room evaporates snowy and wide open into the polar sky. Climbing is done on steep and transverse rock ramps or tilted planes that everywhere serve as a substitute for stairs.  The rooms we encountered had imaginable shapes and proportions, ranging from five-pointed stars to perfect triangles and cubes. It may be safe to say that their common average is about 30 × 30 feet on the floor, and 20 feet in height; although many larger apartments exist. After carefully examining the upper regions and glacier levels, we descended story after story into the submerged sections, the researchers said, where indeed we immediately saw that we were in a maze of constantly connected rooms and passageways that might lead to a boundless area outside this particular building. The cyclopeian massiveness and giantism of everything about us becomes fraught with oppression; and there is something vague but deeply inhuman in all its contours, dimensions, proportions, decorations, decorations, and the nuances of the construction of the ancient stone are very insulting. We soon realized from what the sculptures revealed that this terrible city was millions of years old.

We cannot yet explain the engineering principles used in the balance and adjustment of extensive rock mass anomalies, although the arch function is clearly very reliable. The rooms we visited were completely empty of all portable content, a circumstance that underpins our belief in intentional urban desertion. The main decorative feature is the almost universal mural sculpture system; which tend to run in continuous horizontal bands three feet wide and arranged floor-to-ceiling alternately with bands of the same width given into geometric arabesques. There are exceptions to this regulatory rule, but the dominance is huge.  However, often times, a series of smooth cartouches containing groups of dots with strange patterns will sink along one of the arab bands.

That technique, we soon saw, matured, perfect, and developed aesthetically to the highest level of civilized mastery; though completely alien in every detail to the art traditions known from mankind. In the smooth running of the execution, no statue I had ever seen could get close to him. The smallest detail of intricate vegetation, or animal life, is provided with stunning clarity despite the bold scale of the carvings; while conventional design is a marvel of skillful complexity. Arabic demonstrates a deep use of mathematical principles, and consists of indistinct symmetric curves and angles based on the quantity five. The pictorial band follows a very formal tradition, and involves a typical perspective treatment; but has artistic power that moves us deeply regardless of the time lag of the broad geological period. Their design method relies on a single juxtaposition of cross-sections with two-dimensional silhouettes, and embodies an analytical psychology beyond that of the known ancient races. It is free to compare this art with that represented in our museum. Those who look at our photographs will probably find its closest analog in the bizarre conception of the bravest futurists.

The subject of the statues clearly dating from epochal life disappeared from their creation, and contains most of the clear history. It is this historically abnormal thinking of the primal race - a state that operates, through chance, miraculously in our favor - that makes the carving so informative to us, he said, and that led us to place their photography and transcription above all other considerations. In certain rooms, the predominant arrangement varies with the presence of maps, astronomical charts, and so on, and other scientific designs on an enlarged scale — these things provide corroborating evidence that is naive and terrible to what we collect from pictorial images and photos of fathers. By hinting at what the whole reveals, I can only hope that my account will not arouse greater curiosity than the sane vigilance of the believer at all. It would be tragic if anyone was lured into a world of death and horror with warnings meant to discourage them.

The Elder Things's