The Nameless City
The Nameless City is a story from the perspective of an unnamed archaeologist, on a trek to explore and research the "nameless city" of the Arabian Peninsula, and to find the city that the mad poet Abdul Alhazred wrote about in his unexplained couplet "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die."
The lost city
The story begins with the protagonist's discovery of the nameless city, and his cursory examinations of its buildings and structures. The city itself is faded and old, the stonework smoothed bare by centuries of sandy wind. The building interiors are all stooped and low to the ground, seemingly unsuitable for humans to walk around in. The protagonist assumes that the lost citizens merely crawled everywhere as a religious practice. Inside, the pictograms are unblemished, and show many anthropomorphic lizard creatures, like a mixture of a seal and an alligator, in the roles of the city's denizens
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Deeper into the Abyss
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The protagonist explores deeper into the winding tunnels of the city, and comes across a large room with glass cases lining the edges of the room and more elaborate murals of the lizard creatures adorning the walls. The murals contain depictions of the city's rise and fall, and the recession of the sea which left it lying forlorn in a desert. They also depict the creatures brutally and mercilessly massacring and consuming what appear to be rough depictions of people. The protagonist examines the glass cases and finds that each one (There are numerous lined in rows along the walls) contains what appears to be a realistically-made mummified effigy of the bizarre lizard creatures. The protagonist assumes they are idols of religious significance, though is disturbed by their macabre.
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Even Death May Die
The Protagonist reaches the bottom of the subterranean building, and is met with a yawning chasm. He stands over the darkness, gazing into it, when suddenly a large burst of air rushes from the chasm, through the tunnels he came through, and away. A chill goes down the protagonist's spine as the clicking of reptilian claws on stone fills the corridor he entered through, and the story ends.