We came into the back chamber; I found what seemed to be an alien-looking machine made with strange polished white and gold metals with etched hieroglyphic designs on the surface and a strange red-looking crystal placed in the centre of it, with many wires and tubes in the machine. In the middle of the crystal is a golden electrical stream pulsating and moving that seems to act as a conductor or a fuse. By the side of this machine, it had a control panel with gauges and an electrical power switch that looked like you'd find on any diesel or steam engine in a power plant.

"This must be a machine that helps keep their portal stable?" I pondered, looking at the alien device and seeing Jethro nodding his head, taking the information.

I saw that daring glint in his steely sailor eyes. My thoughts were caught by the strange red crystal fastened into the device. I reached my bloody right hand out to touch it. The crystal felt so hot that it burnt my fingers and palm upon contacting its smooth surface. I cried out in pain, bringing my hand back, shaking from the burn.

"What's wrong?" Jethro asked, frightened by my reaction.

"It's the crystal! It's hotter than an iron skillet on a stove." I answered, holding my trembling burnt right hand.

I am deeply fascinated by this crystal; it looked valuable and made me questioned it, as it didn't burn or melt the wires connecting it.

Darkness came over the island. I and Jethro hung around in a cavern outside of the main chamber that had a broad view of the southern lands of the island, where I could see glittering rivers flowing to the east and into the ocean, with what seemed to be farming steads, with patches of crop fields. The full moon rose from the eastern horizon, white and bright like a large pearl in the sky. We could see the skyline of Saint Hildegard and the spires of the central neo-gothic cathedral. The bells of that cathedral chimed, taking their toll, ringing with those strange alien sounds eleven times now. My ears filled with its watery resonating hum, giving me a strange sense of calm peace. I closed my eyes, and my mind dwelled on the cityscapes of those strange and lost civilizations I saw in my trance hours ago. My soul yearned to return to those majestic places just to listen to their music and gazed in awe at their beautiful divine splendour.

"Thar be a commin! Look alive, Lancy!" Jethro alerted me as I opened my eyes and peered down the edge of the cliff face we sat upon.

Both I and Jethro crawled back and slightly looked over the ledge. I glanced at Jethro and watched him taking out from the inside of his coat pocket a metal cigar-holding case and his brass zippo lighter. Coming up the cobblestone road was a parade or procession of some kind; leading the parade were twenty-three red-robed figures, twenty-two of them held up a staff alight with a magical flame. Four of them were carrying on their shoulders a stretcher, and I spotted Clara dressed in a white silk gown that is rather revealing of her figure.

Clara wore a golden crown upon her brow studded with gemstones. Her eyes are closed, and her face seemed tranquil, as if in a deep sleep. Leading the four red-robed figures, carrying Clara, was what I assumed the leader wearing a purple velvet robe with golden embroidered designs and a white gold crown. Behind the red-robed figures were dozens of black-robed figures following behind and carrying torches. They were all chanting a haunting hymn in their march towards the volcano, where they entered the sanctuary's entrance. The chant is spoken in a foreign alien tongue that belongs to the Orah Dóndos. I found it odd that I could understand the lyrics. Translating, it goes something like this.

"O Wise Yarnǒtho, thou humble servants invoke thee; we invite thee into our mortal abodes beyond thou immortal realm of Yonsǒ, where bliss and grace reign supreme this hollowed eve of the pregnant moon!

O Wise Yarnǒtho, thou humble servants invoke thee; we seek thou permission to wash thine steps of thou throne of wisdom, the sacred seat of all knowledge of all the chaotic universes, of thy golden feet in the blood of virgins, and undefiled beauty for thine pleasure and appeasement.

O Wise Yarnǒtho, thou humble servants invoke thee to birth a New Order into our realm and rule and guide us into the Glorious Age of the Holy All-Father Ahörannos, blessed is he the creator of all Chaos and of Order!

Drömmst! Drömmst! Drömmst!

Deliver us! Deliver us! Deliver us!

Gærd Nåosh! Gærd Nåosh! Gærd Nåosh!

Hail The New Order! Hail The New Order! Hail The New Order!"

"What are they singing, Lancy?" Jethro asked; he was spooked as his face goes pale to this strange demonic chanting, and he crawled away from the ledge.

"I don't know what they are singing." I lied to calm him, "But whatever it is, it's a ritual of some kind." I said, crawling back from the ledge and getting up to my feet as Jethro helped me.

"We better get inta position; I'll stay near the machine while ya stay near the entrance of that elevator and will ambush them and save that poor lass before they do God knows what on her." I have done as Jethro commanded; I saw him hide in a dark narrow crevice near the alien machine. He was getting his cigar lit as he squatted in the shadows of his hiding place.

I was heading over to my position. I felt a strong calling coming from that demonic scripture that lay covered on the pulpit. I am hesitant, but a calming sultry womanly voice beckoned me to just- "Take Me..." to just take it. I don't know what came over my senses there and then, but I am strongly compelled and came upon the pulpit once more and uncovered that unholy book of blasphemy. I felt the power within it vibrate in my hand as I touched the surface and greedily took it from its resting place, putting it in my duffle bag. I replaced it with the four last Spanish Sardine cans and covered them, then left to hide in the shadows of the elevator entranceway.

They entered their sacred sanctuary, chanting deeply that their voices echoed and resonated throughout the stone walls. I watched as the red-robed wizards, all nineteen of them, stood around the black obelisks, chanting in a feverish pitch as they stamped the bottom of their staffs into the stone that sparks from the fires on top rained down where they stood. The four taller robed figures, each standing at nine-foot-tall, placed Clara on the stone altar. They removed their hoods, revealing their faces having golden scales, long black silky hair, and bright red serpent-like eyes. Prominent high cheekbones, pointed noses and chins, arched brows, pointed long ears and slender necks. But they are nothing like a human, no, I know who they were, and they are the Orah Dóndos, pure breeds of their kind, from what they looked like. The head wizard approached the pulpit and raised his hands before him, ceasing the chanting, and all became still and quiet for a few long moments.

The head wizard removed his robe's purple cloak from over his head and revealed his youthful face. He had flowing, silken golden hair with long locks resting on his shoulders. He wore a white gold circlet crown with a red diamond-shaped gemstone resting on his forehead. He had sharp and stunning blue opal eyes that sparkled of amethyst and golden flecks. He looked androgynous, and strangely, he was uncannily attractive.

I snapped my brain out of those fanciful thoughts; I entertained and buried down those damnable desires of wanting his youthful, supple flesh for my own pleasure. I know he had obtained his beauty through the black magic he practiced.

Yet I knew who he is; he was Ostermann, the very one who brought about all this misery and woe upon his home and many others who unfortunately crossed his path.

"My fellow brothers!" Ostermann spoke from the pulpit with a tone of firm authority that sounded like a priest, "Tonight is the night of the pregnant moon, that our God shall be birthed forthwith into the chosen virgin, whose holy womb shall harbour his sacred soul!"

"Drömmst!" chanted the others.

"We shall consummate this holy unity of mortal flesh, and immortal soul forged in our desire, our burning wills of passion, and in it shall be the conception of our Ageless God Yarnǒtho the Wise who shall rule all the Earth and bring about a New Order to guide us into the Glorious Age of Ahörannos reborn! We are his chosen people; his immortal sons taught in his ways and shall do his bidding forthwith forevermore!"

"Drömmst!"

"Brother Nicholas, Activate the Ôhgöm'noria and let the conception of Wise Yarnǒtho's ageless soul begin!" Ostermann ordered one of his disciples as the robed man bowed before his master and went towards the back chamber, where the alien machine is located.

Ostermann proceeded to do a self-debasement ritual, where he stripped himself naked of his robe. I looked upon him from the shadows, the backside of Ostermann's naked beauty, seeing his lush, supple ivory cheeks of his bottom; he had the small breasts of a woman that he could be easily mistaken for a young woman in the dark.

Ostermann procured a silver ritual dagger; he took the pointed tip and sliced it into his left middle finger, down the middle of his palm, and then stabbed himself onto his left breast. He staggered a bit backwards and hunched forward to the pain he inflicted on himself as the blood of that self-sacrifice poured out of that stab wound, down his chest and stomach, and onto his groin. He took out the silver dagger, and magically, the wound to his heart healed, and the blood that ran down his body moved on its own and took form into hieroglyph symbols like tattoos, decorating his naked milky white flesh, highlighting his divine beauty in red sigils. Both palms of his hands held two pools of his own blood that formed there as he brought up both hands to his pleasure-filled face and bathed his features in his own red scarlet.

I will admit that I never felt a strong attraction to another man in all my life. But what I saw this night was a rather deviant erotic display of supple white flawless flesh stained in scarlet that any firm religious man of the cloth would be driven to madden lechery at such a sight and would claim such beauty for their own hedonistic defilement. I felt that way; I was ashamed of those feelings and those dirty desires that made me feel like a sick deviant. My heart and lions pounded and throbbed with immense want for Ostermann. Yet, I had to shake it out of my head. I had to hurt myself to get that repugnant shameful lust out of me and replace it with pain.

Then suddenly, I heard a strange mechanical revving of an engine, followed by a long whirling humming noise that's uninterrupted. The alien droning noise resonated on the walls of the ritual chamber, coming from the generator room as electrical sparks amplify from the wires and caused the black obelisks to glow in an electrical field. The other wizards chanted in unison.

"Gærd Nåosh! Gærd Nåosh! Gærd Nåosh!" they chanted in a rhythmic feverish pitch at the activation of the alien machine.

The machine electrified the air, and my senses started to tingle, and my mouth tasted heavily of coppery metal.

Ostermann smiled gleefully as he watched his own blood taken from extended arms and open hands. His blood splattered and stained the black surfaces of the obelisks, turning deep red, and soon they seemed to burn like hot red steel from an industrial furnace. The full moon loomed over the volcanic crater and aligns precisely with the altar, the crater and the strange ten celestial bodies that made a circle in the heavens. Ostermann's blood flowed out of the ten obelisks and into the moon, staining it red, thus turning it into a blood moon.

Then a loud lightning boom is heard as a great fiery portal opened up, and the ritual chamber filled with the loud claps of many rolling thunderbolts. I peeked out of my hiding spot for a moment and looked into the swirling fiery swept abyss, amazed at what I beheld. There were great black serpents, the size of skyscrapers, slithering like snakes in that void, roaring tremendously, that shook the chambers and rattled my bones, chilling my blood and soul.

The unearthly beasts blew streams of hellfire that I feared would come right into the chamber. Yet, the serpent dragons disappeared from view, and floating around were broken-up landmasses with forests, waterfalls, and splendid buildings of strange inhuman architecture. And rising before my view, in that fiery nether, was a tremendous black pagoda tower with sloped roofs, with a red diamond-shaped pinnacle burning in rainbow flames that glimmered and sparkled with a magical aura.

My mind fell into a trance, and whatever is between my forehead felt wonderful. My head and my body felt light as a feather that my soul could've left my body at any moment again. I heard a voice calling down to me from that open portal. It called to me in my innermost thoughts, calling me in a firm, fatherly tone, and I felt it knew me well. But I shook my head violently and snapped out of that strange peaceful trance, pinching the welt on my sore jaw again.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Ostermann exclaimed in euphoric exhaltation.

Then I watched him uncover the podium of his pulpit, and that happy childish look in his eyes etched in his beautiful redden face soon disappeared as he looked dumbstruck at the four cans of sardines that I placed there. Part of me felt bad for stealing from him; I felt strongly compelled to step out of my shadow and return the book to him. But I couldn't! My mind was struggling with this newfound conflict that I never asked for, ripping me apart! It's maddening! Like I am being pulled into two areas against my will! I had to hit my forehead against the rock to get these feelings of sympathy out and replace them with that of pain.

"What? I had it here? Where could my book have gone?" Ostermann said worryingly, as he looked at the shelves of the podium and pulpit in a frantic panic.

"Outsider!" called out the wizard, who went to activate the generator, but he was quickly cut down by a spray of bullets fired from Jethro's Tommy gun. Those strange senses and feelings that invaded me left me as suddenly as they entered. All in the chamber halted their wild feverish chant and became alert as Jethro emerged from the shadow, having a feral wide daring grin on his lips and a glint of murder in his eyes.

"Stop the Outsider before he ruins the Ritual!" Ostermann ordered as all twenty-one wizards turned towards Jethro, flinging fireballs and electrical sparks at him from the tops of their staffs and tips of their fingers.

"Yar all goin back ta Satan! Say Hi ta yar bastardly father fer me in hell!" Jethro laughed like a mad hardy sailor, firing off his Tommy gun onto the group of wizards, killing a few as he dodged and dove out of their spells cast upon him.

Ostermann leapt over the pulpit and altar where Clara slept; he flew through the air and landed on the ground to join the fight, aiding with his powers, fully naked and covered in his blood.

"Call up the Half Breeds and have them take him down!" Ostermann ordered in a desperate voice, slinging an electrical current from his left hand at Jethro, who dodged it in the nick of time as he entered the tunnel leading into the generator room.

That was the last I ever saw of Captain Jethro, as I could hear him continue to shoot his Tommy gun, laughing wholeheartedly in the desperate circumstance he found himself in. I quickly emerged from my hiding spot; my face etches with heavy guilt, regret and shame for what I had done to Ostermann. I had my revolver drawn as I rushed to the altar and picked up Clara in my arms, still in deep slumber, letting her golden crown fall off her brow and clang hard on the ground.

Yet, the sight of my eyes was lost in the swirling vortex, that awesome enchanted bridge between two worlds, joining as one for a brief moment in our time. A strange unworldly sensation held onto my soul for a long moment, and I felt I had left all earthly reality. I could not hear the machine running or the commotion of the fighting, only my steady breathing and the voices of my thoughts. I saw a shimmering rainbow bridge forming out of that black tower and coming forth, where rolling black clouds grumble and rumble with thunderbolts.

Taking form in the black smoke clouds and wisps was a human figure. And there I saw the formation of Yarnǒtho, who took the form of my mother before she died. The God or Goddess looked young and beautiful, my mother had that sweet smile, her teeth bright white, and she wore a beautiful dress that she wore during the holidays at our grandparents' house.

"My son, come to me...Tell me your desires..." The God spoke to me in such a calm, motherly tone, a voice I dearly missed, that it brought me to tears.

My eyes were soon taken by visions of my past, a past I never had, seeing my younger self in my old childhood home and neighbourhood, where I played with friends I lost in the war and lived with a happy, loving family. My beautiful mother, alive and well, a happy, loving father who never abused me or my mother and never died from drinking, and a little sister I never had where my mother miscarried when my father beat her when she was pregnant. My grandparents are alive and well again, and we all helped out on their farm and made it prosperous.

I saw myself serving in the US Army and going into the World War, becoming a decorated war hero, holding the Medal of Honor, and I held the rank of Major. My right knee and leg working normally that I was no longer a cripple, and I could run again. I saw myself running in the Olympic teams of 1920 and 1924, winning gold medals for America and being praised as a national hero in my country, where many children looked up to me, that my father was proud of me, shedding happy tears for me, the love of a father I never had or knew, that I so much desired and wanted. And there I stood in a crowd of people, where I happily signed their autograph requests, taking pictures with those who admired me.

I saw my future marrying a woman similar to Clara, yet she was like my mother in so many ways, and we lived a happy family life out in the country on a ranch in Wyoming, raising four children that looked just like me and her. We grew old together, watching as our children had families of their own and became successful people in business and politics, spending time together during the holidays, exchanging gifts, and happy, warm-hearted laughter filled my countryside mansion. And there, I saw my older self seated in a rocking chair with the love of my life, smiling happily in the summer evening, watching the fireflies come out and dance as I held my wife's hand and smiled at her, looking lovingly into her eyes, feeling like I was the luckiest man in the whole wide world.

"This is the perfect life you've always wanted...This can all be yours, my son, if you merely submit to me and my will and allow me to enter into Clara and be birthed into your world. All your past pains, all the hurt you've endured, I can take away. Your heart mended, your mind healed, and your soul restored with renewed hope and a burning, passionate flare for all the wonders that this earthly life has to offer. Where you shall share it with all the loved ones you've lost, so, unfortunately. I alone can bring back all you've lost and loved to life and change the fragmented past and present that your soul currently dwells within this fragility of mortal existence..." Yarnǒtho spoke to me with such sincere compassion through my mother that altered her voice, as I saw her smiling warmly with loving, familiar eyes, looking down upon me.

"Yes! Y-Yes! I want it all! Please! I beg of you! I am sorry for all that I have done to you! Please forgive me of my trespasses, O Wise and Beautiful Yarnǒtho!" I don't know what happened to me in that moment of indescribable bliss and euphoria I felt flowing over and inside of me. But I cried out like a fucking pathetic little child, crying my eyes out, weeping with tears of absolute joy.

My soul was lost in that rapture, that satisfying salvation. I had never felt so happy in my life at the possible past, present and future I could have; that could've been mine that was just in my grasp; my heart leapt with desire, and I wanted it so badly. I wanted that life so much as I shamelessly dropped to my knees before Yarnǒtho the Wise, knowing within myself I've given anything for that beautiful, perfect reality and have my soul, my heart, my mind, all at peace and in bliss. Something I never knew or felt in this imperfect reality I suffer in.

"So shall it be...My son..." Yarnǒtho the Wise thusly spoke down to me as my mother's hand entered our realm. I felt her fingers brushing up my hat, taking it off my head and felt her warm indexes and palm caressing and weaving through my hair; my happiest childhood memories with her flooded my mind as she comforted me to sleep. It felt incredible as I closed my happy, tearing eyes, accepting Yarnǒtho into my life, that I felt love, loved by a God beyond our world.

Then it all ended...I heard a loud, powerful explosion coming from the generator room. That old crazy bastard had done it...

"No!" I heard Yarnǒtho and my mother shout out, withdrawing her hand as the portal began to fail. The portal suddenly disappeared, and those feelings of wonder, bliss, and euphoria left me. I returned crashing down into a horrific realization of what has been done as the state of my current hard existence entered me. Those cold old familiar senses came back to me, breaking out of that sobbing, pathetic mess I was in.

A great surge flowed throughout the island as explosions erupted in every part, followed by the ground rumbling and shaking like an earthquake. I staggered up to my feet and limped away from the sigil as the obelisks sparked with electricity. Then suddenly, all together exploded, shattering into millions of pieces.

"Damn you, Jethro! Damn, you! God Damn you to hell!" I cursed bitterly in a loud shout; my teary eyes looked toward the entrance of the generator, and all I saw was only black smoke and dust coming out.

Yet I could make out the feminine figure of Ostermann, staggering in the veil. I high-tailed it out of there, back to the elevator I came from, limping with speed down the stairs as cracks appeared in the steps and as rocks fell, nearly hitting me. I entered the elevator, closed the cage grid door, and pulled down the lever, sending me back to the cavern below. I stood there for a moment, my face heavy with regret, my heart weighed the heaviest, denied all that it desired, that I was so close, yet so far away now.

The elevator halted at the bottom floor as I scrambled out with Clara in my arms. I limped along the shaky ground until suddenly I felt a hard punch accost me from my left side, causing me to fall over to my right, dropping Clara onto the stone floor with my revolver. Stepping out of the shadows was Rudolf, naked without his robe. He had a look of hatred for me in his glaring green eyes, and his dorsal fin stood on end.

"You betrayed us! You betrayed me! You destroyed our holy sanctuary!" Rudolf roared in his attack. I scrambled to get my gun in the nick of time before he grabbed me.

I felt Rudolf bear hugging me, squeezing my back. The book I carried in my duffle bag pressed harder against my lower back, making it crack, and my right hand shook to the immense pain. Holding my revolver, I pointed at Rudolf and fired three rounds at him. Yet, to my shock and dread, the rounds didn't do anything to him as they flattened into mushrooms on his iron-like scales that protected his body, and fell to the floor harmlessly.

"You can't kill me with your mortal toy! I will enjoy watching you die as I squeeze the life out of you!" He said with a calm satisfaction that I saw the reflection of my struggling self in his sadistic gaze, his eyes blinking at me. That's when my mind immediately caught on, and I aimed my shaking revolver at his right green eye.

"Wait a minute! No!" Rudolf cried out as I fired my fourth-round right into his eye, destroying it and causing him to bleed greenish blood that splattered onto my face. He dropped me, and I could breathe again; as I sucked in a gasp of cold salted air into my burning lungs.

I heard Rudolf's heart-wrenching animalistic scream of pain as he fell to his knees. His shaking webbed hands covered his destroyed eye. I got up to my feet, my revolver in hand. My eyes held sympathy for what I did to Rudolf, yet I felt obligated to end his miserable unnatural life. I gripped my revolver and quickly shoved the barrel into an opening of his mouth, pulling back the hammer and squeezing the trigger, ending his life quickly and painlessly as possible. Rudolf's dead body felled face flat on the stone floor, and a waterfall of his blood flowed out of his gaping mouth.

I returned to Clara, still sleeping on the stone floor, hardly stirring awake and picked her up once more in my arms and carried her onto the Runabout, where I jumped in with her in the passenger seat. There, I laid her down on the back of the boat, dropping my gun on the passenger seat flooring that I didn't have time to claim it. I climbed over to the driver's seat and scramble into the glove box, looking for the keys, and there I found it, and quickly placed it into the ignition of the boat and turned it on, hearing its engine roar to life. I throttled the boat's speed lever, the tied mooring lines broke off from the rotten wooden planks of the dock, and the boat drove forward at thirty knots.

I stirred the wheel frantically, avoiding falling rocks from the cavern's vaulted ceiling collapsing in on itself as I looked back to the docks, still illuminated by the elevator's fading electrical lights. I swear to this day, I had seen the last glimpse of Ostermann's pale naked body, standing in the middle of the dust clouds of the falling cavern rocks and the sprays of white sea mist from the disturbed waters. I felt his blue eyes flare in a glowering glare at me in the darkness, menacing me, hexing me for escaping and destroying all he has built up for so long.

I continued to drive away from the shores of the island, going west back to the Mainland. I glanced back and watched as the volcano rupture in a fantastic eruption, spewing lava that sprayed so high into the clear evening skies that it is highlighted by the full moon's rays of pearly white light. It looked like a scene from the End of the World. I looked above the starry skies, and there were no more foreign celestial bodies encircled in the heavens, nor that shimmering aurora borealis.

Parts of the island began to sink into the depths of the North Atlantic, breaking off and being swallowed by the foaming tides. Yet, as the island broke apart and sunk, I heard a beastly scream that sounded like an elephant coming from underwater. I felt it was the beast that sank the Sea Banshee, and I dreaded to encounter it a second time. The whole island sank into the depths as the volcanic mountain spilled lava burning the landscape and water, collapsing in on itself until all of that is swallowed and taken into the black depths, disappearing from my sight on the night of the pregnant moon.