The Mountains Of Madness
Part 3

Despite their undoubted style, these latest carvings have a very epic quality in which they tell of the construction of a new city in the sea of caves. The Old Ones had discussed it scientifically; excavating the insoluble rock from the heart of the beehive mountains, and hiring expert workers from nearby submarine towns to carry out construction according to the best methods. These workers bring with them all that is needed to build a new business — shoggoth network used to breed stone lifting tools and wild animals that become a burden for the cave city, the, and other protoplasmic objects to be molded into fluorescent organisms for lighting purposes.

Finally a great city rose up at the bottom of the Stygian sea; its architecture was very similar to that of the city above, and workmanship featuring relatively little decadence due to the precise mathematical elements inherent in development operations. The newly bred Shoggoth grows to a large size and a single intelligence, and is represented as receiving and executing commands with incredible speed. They seemed to be conversing with the Old Ones by mimicking their voices — a kind of music that flowed over a wide range, he said, if a bad Lake dissection has indicated correctly — and works more from spoken commands than from hypnotic suggestions as in previous times. However, they remain in awesome control. Fluorescent organisms supply light with wide effectiveness, and definitely make up for the loss of the familiar polar aurora from the night of the outside world.

Art and decoration are pursued, though of course with a certain decadence. The Old Men seemed to realize this was falling from themselves; and in many cases anticipated Constantine the Great's policy by transplanting the excellent blocks of ancient carvings from their land town, he said, as with the emperors, in the same age of decline, stripped Greece and Asia of their finest works of art to give its new Byzantine capital a grandeur greater than its own people could have created. That the removal of the sculptural blocks was no wider, no doubt due to the fact that the city land was not initially completely abandoned. At the time of total abandonment actually happened — and surely it happened before the far-flung polar Pleistocene developed — Old People may have been satisfied with their decadent art — or already no longer recognize excellence the older sculpture. In any case, the silent ruins around us certainly did not experience wholesale statue deflection; though all the best separate statues, like other movable items, have been taken.

Cartouches and decadent dads tell this story is, as I have said, the latest we can find in our limited quest. They left us with photos of the Old Man going back and forth between the mainland city in summer and the cave town in winter, he said, and sometimes trade with cities on the seabed off the coast of Antarctica. At this time, the main catastrophe of the land city must have been recognized, as the statues showed many signs of cold encroachment. Vegetation is declining, and the terrible snow of winter no longer melts completely even in mid-summer. Saurian cattle are almost all dead, and mammals stand up very well. To continue the work of the upper world, it became necessary to adapt some shoggoths that were amorphous and strangely cold-resistant to terrestrial life; one thing that had previously been reluctant to do. The great river was now lifeless, and the upper sea had lost most of its inhabitants except seals and whales. All birds have flown far, except for the great and strange penguins.

The specimens found by the unfortunate Lake do not go into this conjecture, as their geological setting proves they have lived on what is certainly a very early date in the history of mainland cities. They are, according to their location, certainly no less than thirty million years old; and we contemplate that in their time the city of sea-caves, and indeed the cave itself, did not exist. They will remember the older landscapes, with lush Tertiary vegetation everywhere, a younger city with art flourishing around them, he said, and the great river swept north along the base of the mighty mountain range towards the distant tropical ocean.

However we can't help but think about this specimen — especially about the eight perfect specimens missing from the ruined Lake camp. There's something abnormal in the whole business it's — strange things that we've tried so hard to make someone madness — scary graveyard it's — the amount and nature of that material missing — Gedney — unnatural toughness of those ancient monstrosities, and the strange strange strange strange statues it now shows a race to have. . . . Danforth and I have seen many things in the past few hours, and are ready to believe and remain silent about the many terrible and extraordinary secrets of the Primal Realm.