(2020)
I. There's a place, deep down under the mountains, far past the dark westernmost fountains, which in tongues of insanity unfit for humanity is known as the Temple of Worms.
In libraries frightful with age where mingle the madman and sage, maps millenarian in glyphs pre-Sumerian show the path for the Temple of Worms. Where the eastern horizon devours the last human lights and watchtowers, in the vespertine skies twisted obelisks rise first to point to the Temple of Worms. Beyond a thick forested mire lit only by wisps of blue fire, their dance in dim hues under clusters of yews lights the way to the Temple of Worms. Across the pale asphodel glades, fields haunted by murmuring shades, into caves dark and deep where all foul ichors seep lies the road to the Temple of Worms. If you, visitor, dare still insist as you choke in the chthonian mist, in the cracked stone beyond a hot sulfurous pond is the gate of the Temple of Worms. II. Obsidian-dark opens the nave, stone cold with the cold of a grave; a wind submundane carries whispers profane through the halls of the Temple of Worms. There rises up, silent and solemn, supported by fungi-clad columns, dug in negative space by some polypous race, the great dome of the Temple of Worms. Your gaze will be drawn at the falter of the light of a lotus-shaped altar wherein dance the dark flames at the blasphemous names that are sung in the Temple of Worms. There stands in the trembling unlight, her visage a matter of fright, a symmetrical wreath of rough scavenger's teeth, the Blind Lady of the Temple of Worms; Smelling all souls across space with the barbels that crown her split face; carved into pure onyx from dreams Babylonic, stands tall in the Temple of Worms. III. If you tear off your gaze and abhor her you'll find a source greater of horror: bodies piled into stacks and torn open on racks fill the breadth the Temple of Worms. Ten thousand are splayed out on wheels; each a different nightmare reveals; many more hang from gibbets their gaunt form to exhibit to all in the Temple of Worms. Below, lie more bodies in tangles, entwined at unnatural angles; pale mountains of skulls rise sightless and dull to the vault of the Temple of Worms. Gray and parchment-like wither the skins, teeth bared in cadaverous grins; most abdomina burst, their interiors dispersed on the floor of the Temple of Worms. Numberless legions of flies make music in mineral skies o'er the limitless paddocks where chittering maddocks increase in the Temple of Worms. Within this invertebrate creche things larger reside in the flesh: blind burrowing creatures with lampetrous features that crawl in the Temple of Worms. The nectars of this peerless rot stream down in stone grates to be caught into fathomless pits wherein monsters unlit swim under the Temple of Worms. Here your eyes find no center to focus; you thought not, ere seeing this locus, in the most tortured slumber that death such a number had sent to the Temple of Worms. If battle and slaughter were loose with famine and poxes profuse in a thousand lifetimes they would not fill a shrine as now full is the Temple of Worms; By each nameless disaster and plague, by all deeds that are judged in the Hague, by fate and by error, by murder and terror, all pile in the Temple of Worms. IV. When your eyes forgive you these scapes, you'll see figures in tattered red capes, half-crawling, half-standing on flesh fields unending -- the priests of the Temple of Worms. They'll turn to you, leaving their barrow called forth by the scent of your marrow, these creatures tellurian in form holothurian that tend to the Temple of Worms. They'll fill up the verminous aisle, their face will unfold into a smile: "Well met, gentle guest! Have respite and be blessed in your stay at the Temple of Worms". Perhaps in a timorous breath you'll complain of the presence of death -- their smile will be lit by your accident wit: "You mean here, in the Temple of Worms? Dear guest, this our temple's a hive, none other so quivers with life! A million-fold beat that you'll feel with your feet as you walk through the Temple of Worms! Return to our Lady of the Tomb, the fullness behold of Her womb: it is swarming with life just awaiting to thrive and go forth from the Temple of Worms. Furthermore, your concern is misplaced: dead lands ought to be to your taste; you've never been safer than here on the way for the heart of the Temple of Worms. What's pain, but unsated desire? What is life, but autophagous fire? Once both are extinguished, the struggle relinquished, to sleep in the Temple of Worms, You'll know then a peace unsurpassed, having shed all your sorrows at last, celestial or carnal: a silence of charnel, the peace of the Temple of Worms. Nonetheless, all the life one sees here does not give much more reason to fear: in spite of your dread it prefers much the dead -- which suffice, in the Temple of Worms!" V. That stated, the tenders will scatter, not caring to beg or to flatter out of the wayfarer as much as a prayer for the sake of the Temple of Worms. This priesthood, alone in its kind, has no tithes or donations on mind: all they want, anyway, in the end finds its way on its own to the Temple of Worms. There's no reason to open one's coffer to make a munificent offer of diamonds or gold that'd brighten the mold (out of place in the Temple of Worms); No delicacy or grace is intended, naught pretty, bright-hued, or sweet-scented, frankincense or nardus or camelopardus (ill-fitting the Temple of Worms). No caesar, khan, satrap, or lord could a treatment of favor afford; no sultan or pope ought to nurture such hope when it comes to the Temple of Worms. All ivory, cedar, and cypress with all the orichalcum of Cyprus would buy you no place of comparative grace in the ranks of the Temple of Worms. All peoples, religions, and cultures fit well in the crop of the vultures that soar with grim beaks o'er the purulent peaks and the fields of the Temple of Worms. Men of all ranks and conditions will find themselves peers in perdition; of high or low name, they'll all taste just the same to the worms of the Temple of Worms. Emperor, courtier, or slave; philanthropist, hermit, or knave; of sharp or dull wit, you'll be equally fit for a pit in the Temple of Worms. VI. If you think your sojourn was enough, you'll be sent with a shrug and a laugh; you're welcome to quit -- or at least for a bit -- the precincts of the Temple of Worms. Unbarred and unlocked is the way, with no guardian or boatsman to pay; no walls close around, no tricephalous hound stands guard to the Temple of Worms. Although we conjecture that soon you'd regret to have lost your fortune, that freedom from illness or want, in the stillness that reigns in the Temple of Worms; And the steps that you've trod you'll retread to the crystalline city of the dead, by force or by will, to the shade and the chill and the beauty of the Temple of Worms. Here the cradle in which you were born; here the chamber in which you'll be mourned; why spend so much grief over something so brief as time outside the Temple of Worms? As the wheel of the aeons turns by, as all that now lives must then die, you'll steadily endure in a form great and pure in the belly of the Temple of Worms; Though humans alone you saw here, this pleases not fully the Unseer: this human domain is no more than a grain of the extent of the Temple of Worms. Unchanging, you'll change for the better, unbounded from any base fetter; your spawn will bring forth your new majesty and worth with the glory of the Temple of Worms. You'll be blessed with magnificent forms as soon or late as you return -- no longer a guest, when you come to your rest somewhere here in the Temple of Worms!