"Old Ones. I am he whom you prophesied." The writing was there before me, glowing, providing scant illumination. It was still in Latin. I read the words again. Surely it was I.

"I have done what you asked. I have fulfilled my part," I demanded. "Give her back to me. Give me my power."

The giant breathing continued, each exhalation brought a greater stink of rotten ocean. Nothing responded. I grew angry. I found the strength to push myself away from the obelisk, standing shakily on my own feet. I pulled my ax into my hands.

"It is mine! Give me my power!"

The breathing continued.

"Damn you then." I found the strength to lift my ax. I swung it into the narrow obelisk. Obsidian chips flew as I struck. "Damn you!" I struck again, finding strength in my fury. Lines of the prophecy winked out of existence. "I do not need you!" Bits of the obelisk embedded themselves in my skin as I hammered it. "I am the one!" The narrow thing cracked and shifted from the roof. More lines disappeared. "The power is mine!" A final blow turned the center into powder. "I curse you, Old Ones!" I spit on their prophecy.

The obelisk toppled, the lower part shattered, and the top hung suspended for a long moment before detaching from the unseen ceiling of the cavern and falling, exploding like glass on impact. I was left alone in the dark, gasping, heaving. Dying.

We must go now, Boy. Hurry.

The cavern shifted. I had drawn the attention of the Old Ones. Shapes dropped down around me, somehow visible as darker than the shadows.

Come. Must leave his mind.

What's happening?

He has-how you say?-pissed them off.

Ten thousand glowing eyes opened on the cavern walls as the giant tentacles encircled me, suckers piercing and ripping into my rotten flesh, lifting me upwards through the cavern, into the gaping gelatinous maw of an Old One. I screamed, but acid filled my mouth and poured down my throat, burning, tearing.

Darkness…

Pain…

I was once again myself. Owen Z. Pitt.

Thank goodness.

The memory was fading away as the Old Man pulled me back toward light and sanity.

I saw Lord Machado as he was cruelly twisted into the Cursed One. His human form was stripped away, replaced with the foul organic materials of the ancient alien trespassers. His mind was probed and tortured, shattered and pulped against incomprehensible forces, pushed beyond the breaking point of any mortal being. The torment lasted for a hundred years.

Finally satisfied at the punishment, or perhaps growing bored and tiring of it, the Old One dropped the pulsing mass of black tissue back to the floor where it landed with a wet splattering.