Picking himself up from the wreckage of the ship, water spewing from his lips, he stumbled from the crashing waves. Taking a knee, he coughed violently and inhaled the salty ocean air, satisfying his burning lungs. He surveyed his surrounding with wild eyes, taking in the bleak landscape of barren rocky shores and jagged precipices. His gaze was drawn to a thick red trail of blood weaving its way towards a large cavern formation. Unable to find any other suggestions of humanity or life otherwise, he acquiesced to follow it.He stumbled along the scarlet path, the sharp rocks he tread upon digging into his feet. Tentatively coming to the mouth of the cave, he tread softly into the cavern, disoriented and weak, his memory imprinted with the panicked screams of his comrades as they were overtaken by the waves. Heavy drops slid from hanging stalactites as he staggered into the grotto, the faint breeze coming to an abrupt halt as he entered. Taking a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, he shivered, an intense wave of frigid air overtaking him with an unusual sense of dread. As he tread further in, he found the ground underneath him had become a slick stone tile engraved in aberrant symbols unlike anything he’d seen before. A dull, deep buzzing echoed forebodingly throughout the dark hollow as he tread apprehensively on.

A putrid odor met his nose and he retracted, for it was the stench of rotting flesh. He tentatively stepped forward and rounded a slight turn in the cavern to be greeted with a grim sight indeed. A multitude of human corpses, entrails, and remains covered in a pasty green substance and lay across the tile in a demented exhibit of horror. He froze, and as he made a move to back away, his ears were met with an unnatural, guttural howl coming from the mouth of the cave.

His heavy breath condensing in front of him as he shivered uncontrollable, not from the cold, but from fear. An all-enveloping fear that invaded and violated the deepest reaches of his mind. He found himself losing control, the most primal, animal instinct ripping and tearing itself through discipline and other human creations as he felt his heartbeat hasten. In this moment of pure, untainted horror he found himself only able to run. The stretched shadows horrifically distorted into shapes foreign to the human mind as he fled through the perverse corridors.

Behind him he heard the abomination’s bloodcurdling howl once more, followed by scrambling of claws on stone and the flapping of wings. He ran desperately through the corridors lit by strange red lanterns, slipping across the slick tiles and slamming into a wall. He pulled himself up frantically, catching a glimpse of the fate awaiting him should he falter: leathery wings and lanky scaled arms attached to a barrel of a body, with glowing red eyes that shone nigh as bright as the lanterns themselves. Scrambling into a side room he with slammed the heavy metal door shut as it groaned loudly in protest. Sighing with relief he turned and examined his surroundings with a growing sense of awe. Awe at the shear hopelessness of his situation.

He stood in a circular room, a small aquifer opposite the door, in he the exact center of the room lay a red circle painted in what smelled as human blood, assumedly flowing from the fresh corpse of a young man laid out upon the ground in a horrific manner, with his organs splayed out in a grizzly display. Around him knelt half a dozen dark figures robed from head to toe in black vestments adorned with the same red symbols that lay across the tile. The dark figures rose with an otherworldly fluidity, as though they barely existed. He heard one of the form’s whisper, “He has arrived.”  With heavy, dragging steps they began to make their approach.

His head swung wildly from side to side as the figures drew closer, seeing only one option he ran forward, pushing past the robed characters, and dove into the aquifer. Swimming vigorously towards a tunnel opposite him. Preternatural, twisted tentacles dripping with opaque substances of unknown origin burst through the sludge in the bottom of the pool. They lashed out with wicked speed, latching onto him and enveloping him in their icy grip. With a sadistically sluggish rate, they drug him through murky liquid and into the muck below. His arms swung, he cried out, but he heard no sound, and he found himself smiling in horrific fascination at the peril of his situation. In the arms of the Old Ones, he found himself at peace, comforted by their black tendrils. In the silence, in the darkness, he found truth.