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darkness, a test of our respective affiliations to pitch. While
my body was comprised of only flesh and blood—whereas
the Unduurians partook almost exclusively of shadow—my
deeds courted a blackness that rivaled any shade that ever
lived beneath the earth. My contest with Tom Hush had
taught me something of the fickle nature of shadows—how
they might betray one master for another.
I whispered to the surrounding darkness of the fire and
light I had delivered unto the spaces beneath Lastrygone,
how I had filled the hollow earth with the sun—and that I
might choose to do so again, here. The darkness came to
me like a lost dog, circling me, whispering its allegiance.
At my command, the last breath of pitch was denied the
Unduurians’ heaving lungs. Within seconds, my pursuers
began to fall away like the fading memories of childhood.
Soon, I was left only with the drifting eel-things that haunted
the high branches of the black orchard. But without masters
to command them, they glided away.
I traveled far and for days into the darkness of caves,
hoping to find my way back to the surface of the world, but
I was confronted only by fresh gloom. Perhaps it was my
ninth day under the earth when I encountered a thin stream
of light draining down into a wide stone chamber, signaling
for the first time my nearness to the lighted world. However,
no sooner had I began my steep climb toward the source of
the emaciated light when something gigantic detached itself
from the titan shadows of the chamber.
Sane words were never meant to describe such a creature.
Only the language of madness and nightmare could do
justice to the thing. The cave walls behind me exploded into
stone shrapnel as a bizarre extrusion struck out. The thing,
appearing to be neither god nor animal, gathered darkness
with each step, moving between visibility and oblivion.
Its size, easily greater than any prosaic earthly creature of
land or sea, failed to produce even the smallest sound—its

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