Albadi’s lips compressed. “These beings are not like mortal creatures, Captain Kovitz.” He carefully turned a page in the ancient manuscript.

She held up her hands. “Well, tell us about them.” She looked down at the page and frowned. “That’s the Caduceus – it’s Greek.”

Albadi stared down at the image of two intertwined winged snakes. “No Captain, it’s not the Caduceus. That was one of its interpretations after it was adopted by the ancient Greeks. The wand of Hermes, with power over life and death.” He traced the image with one finger. “But the symbol is far older. It was found on Mesopotamian cylinder seals that were over six thousand years old. It was thought to represent the earliest form of the Underworld gods.”

Matt came and stood between Tania and Albadi. “It’s also appeared in Babylonian script, representing the balanced struggle between life and death.”

“Balance,” Albadi said. “Yes, but the balance between two of the greatest Old Ones, brothers, locked in an eternal embrace – Cthulhu, of the dark, and Xastur, the light.”

“Xastur? So there’s two now…and one is good?” Tania asked, with her lip curling.

Albadi seemed unfazed. “Not good as we understand it. We are dust compared to them, and our values and lives mean nothing.”

“And now they’re both coming awake?” Tania asked.

“I don’t know,” Albadi said softly.

“But this shows two beings intertwined or fighting. How come then only one, Cthulhu, is rising?”

“Again, I don’t know, Captain Kovitz. These are ancient beings of immense power. From what I can decipher in the Al Azif, they are currently imprisoned.” He grimaced. “No, that’s not right; they are currently sleeping beneath the sea, beneath the Earth, and in some versions in other dimensions altogether. When they first ruled it was for billions of years, and it was even before the primordial ooze. But something happened, some sort of great cataclysm that made the world unsuitable.

“A few, like Cthulhu, chose to await a more suitable environment – just as some animals hibernate during a time of cold, so also did the Great Old Ones lie dormant. Many perished, simply vanishing over the intervening billions of years. But the true Old Ones, the most powerful of them, slept on. But not eternally. Cthulhu was but waiting, and it had set itself an alarm clock. Not a device, but an event – it would await powerful cosmic forces aligning again, so it could be woken, and then be released to revel once more across the world and cosmos.”

Tania frowned. “Cosmic forces aligning? Like what does that mean?”

Matt said, “The sun or moon being in a certain place?”

“Something like that, but a lot more powerful.” Andy, who had been standing quietly at their rear, came forward. “What about all the planets aligning? That’s about to occur soon.”

“The convergence.” Albadi nodded. “I think this is true. Alhazred called it heaven’s light – all the planets in alignment would have been very bright in the sky. It is a very rare event.” He rose to his feet. “The last such alignment was in 738 AD, the year that Alhazred finished writing the Al Azif. And the next is due…in just a few days’ time.”