opened the hatch,

pushed himself into darkness,

fell toward the face of the world.

Now, for three hundred hours did they battle,

over two weeks by the Old Reckoning,

before the Nameless began to weaken.

Set pushed the attack,

hurt the Thing,

prepared the blow of death.

He had fought it on the waters of the oceans

under the oceans,

had fought it on dry land,

in the air’s cold center,

and on the tops of mountains.

He had pursued it about the globe,

awaiting the opening that would permit

the final thrust.

The force of their conflict shattered two continents,

made the oceans to boil,

filled the air with clouds.

The rocks split and melted,

the heavens were laced with sonic booms

like invisible jewels of the fog,

the steam.

A dozen times did I restrain Typhon,

who would go to his aid.

Then, as the Nameless coiled and reared

to a height of three miles,

a cobra of smoke,

and Set stood his place,

one foot upon the water

one foot on the dry land,

then did that accursed master of mischief-

Angel of the House of Life-

Osiris,

work his deadly betrayal.

What time Set had stolen his consort, Isis,

who had borne him both Typhon and myself,

Osiris had vowed Set's undoing.

Backed by Anubis,

Osiris wielded a portion of the field

in a manner used for release of the solar energies,

driving suns to the limit of stability.

I had bare warning ere he struck.

Set had none.

Never directed at a planet before,

it destroyed the world,

I escaped,

removing myself to a place light years away.

Typhon tried to flee

to the spaces below where he made his home.

He did not succeed.

I never saw my brother again. Nor thyself, good

Nephytha.

It cost me a father who was a son, a brother,

my wife's body;

but it did not destroy the Nameless.

Somehow,

that creature survived the onslaught

of the Hammer that Smashes Suns,

Stunned,

I later found it drifting

amid the world's wreckage,

like a small nebula

hearted with flapping flame.

I worked about it a web of forces,

and, weakened,

it collapsed upon itself.

I removed it then to a secret place

beyond the Worlds of Life,

where it is yet imprisoned

in a room having doors nor windows.

Often have I tried to destroy it,

but I know not what it was that Set discovered

to work its undoing with his Wand.

And still it lives, and yet cries out;

and if ever it is freed,

it could destroy the Life

that is the Middle Worlds.

This is why I never disputed the usurpation

which followed that attack,

and why I still cannot.

I must remain warden,

till Life’s adversary is destroyed.

And I could not have prevented what followed:

the Angels of my many Stations,

grown factious in time of my absence,

fell upon one another,

striving for supremacy.

The Wars of the Stations were perhaps thirty years.

Osiris and Anubis reaped what remained at the end.

The other Stations were no more.

Now, of course, these two must rule with great waves

of the Power,

subjecting the Midworlds to famines,

plagues, wars,

to achieve the balances

much more readily obtained by the gradual,

peaceful actions of the many, of many Stations.

But they cannot do otherwise.

They fear a plurality within the Power.

They would not delegate the Power they had seized.

They cannot co-ordinate it between them.

So, still do I seek a way to destroy the Nameless,

and when this has been done,

shall I turn my energies

to the removal of my Angels

of the two surviving Houses.

This will be easy to accomplish,

though new hands must be ready to work my will.

In the meantime,

it would be disastrous to remove

those who work the greatest good

when two hands stir the tides.

And when this final thing is true,

shall I use the power of these Stations

to re-embody thee, my Nephytha-

Now Nephytha cries beside the sea and says, “It is too much! It shall never be!” and the Prince Who Was A Thousand stands up and raises his arms.

Within a cloud which hovers before him, there appears the outline of a woman. Perspiration dots his brow, and the woman-form grows more distinct. He steps forward then in an attempt to embrace her, but his arms close only on smoke, and his name, which is the name “Thoth,” sounds as a sob within his ears.

Then he is all alone beside the sea, beneath the sea, and the lights in the sky are fishes' bellies digesting fishes' food.

His eyes grow moist before he curses, for he knows it is within her power to end her own existence. He calls her name and there is no reply, not even an echo.

He knows then that the Nameless will die.

He hurls a stone into the ocean and it does not return.

Crossing his arms, he is gone, footprints crumbling in the sand.

Sea birds shriek through the moist air, and a massive reptile rears its green head thirty feet above the waves, long neck swaying, then sinks again beneath the waters a short distance away.

MARACHEK

Regard now the Citadel of Marachek at Midworlds' Center…

Dead. Dead. Dead. Color it dust. This is where the Prince Who Was Once A God comes often, to contemplate many things.

There are no oceans on Marachek. There are still a few bubbly springs, these smelling like wet dogs and being warm and brackish. Its sun is a very tired and tiny reddish star, too respectable or too lazy ever to have become a nova and passed out in a burst of glory, shedding a rather anemic light which makes for deep, bluish shadows cast by grotesque stands of stone upon the enormous beach of dun and orange that is Marachek beneath its winds; and the stars above Marachek may be seen even at midday, faintly, though in the evening they acquire the intensity of neon, acetylene and flash bulb above the windswept plains; and most of Marachek is flat, though the plains rearrange themselves twice daily, when the winds achieve a kind of sterile climax, heaping and unheaping the sands and grinding their grains finer and finer-so that the dust of morning and dusk hangs throughout the day in a yellowish haze, which further detracts from Marachek's eye in the sky-all, ultimately, levelling and settling: the mountains having been ground down, the rocks sculpted and rescuplted, and all buried and resurrected perpetually: this is the surface of Marachek, which of course was once a scene of glory, power, pomp and pageantry, its very triteness crying out for this conclusion; but further, there is one building upon Marachek at Midworlds’ Center which testifies to the saw’s authenticity, this being the Citadel, which doubtless shall exist as long as the world itself though mayhap the sands shall cover and discover it many times before that day of final dissolution or total frigidity: the Citadel-which is so old that none can say for certain that it was ever built-the Citadel, which may be the oldest city in the universe, broken and repaired (who knows how often?) upon the same foundation, over and over, perhaps since the imaginary beginning of the illusion called Time; the Citadel, which in its very standing testifies that some things do endure, no matter how poorly, all vicissitudes-of which Vramin wrote in The Proud Fossil: “… The sweetness of decay ne’er touched thy portals, for destiny is amber and sufficient”-the Citadel of Marachek-Karnak, the archetypal city, which is now mainly inhabited by little skittering things, generally insects and reptiles, that feed upon one another, one of which (a toad) exists at this moment of Time beneath an overturned goblet upon an ancient table in Marachek’s highest tower (the northeastern) as the sickly sun raises itself from the dust and dusk and the starlight comes down less strongly. This is Marachek.