Free Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred by Donald Tyson Page A

honestly, but in dealings with the children of the god Dagon, one of the lords of the Old Ones who lies in his house beneath the waves beyond the Pillars of Hercules, waiting for the stars to realign and become wholesome to his kind.
    His children have been called the dwellers in the deep. They have power to travel both across the land and through the water, although it is said that they much prefer the waves above their heads, and cannot with comfort long endure dryness on their skins, which have a faint bluish cast and are pallid, like the bellies of frogs. Their heads are blunt and rise from their shoulders without the mediation of a neck, their fingers and toes are webbed for easier swimming. At their sides are gills like those of a fish. They wear no clothing but delight in costly ornaments and jewelry, and no superior workers in precious metals and jewels are to be found anywhere in this world. Endless wealth is theirs, for they are aware of all the shipwrecks that have ever been and have easy access to the wrecks to despoil them of their treasures.
    It is a strange characteristic of the dwellers in the depths that they feel affinity for our race. Tales are told of friendships, and even loves, between the children of Dagon and the children of man, and by some unnatural art they are enabled to breed with human beings when they wish to create offspring from these abhorrent couplings—for it was never meant by nature that the Deep Ones and the surface dwellers should engender children, and such spawn is cursed to the tenth generation, for breed as often as they will thereafter with men, they can never expunge the traits of their alien blood.
    The women of Atlantis bred freely with the males of the children of Dagon, in their degenerate lusts preferring these couplings to union with men of their own race, and many children of mixed blood were created. They came to rule Atlantis, although they never appeared unveiled under the light of the sun nor openly challenged the arrogance of the pure-blooded citizens of the city, who regarded the mixed spawn of the deep with revulsion and contempt, even as they became dependent upon their unnatural intelligence and their associations with the children of Dagon to increase the power and prosperity of the city.
    Those of mixed blood grew to hate the much more numerous citizens of pure blood, and their hate burned even more deeply in their hearts than the hatred of the slaves stolen from many lands by the Atlantean ships; for the Atlanteans scorned physical labor of any kind, and relied upon the services of slaves for their every common need, so that the population of slaves within the walls of the city was greater than the number of those native born.
    The city was powered by the fires within crystals gathered by the children of Dagon from deep rifts in the floor of the ocean. These same stones were used to build terrifying weapons that could burn ships and overthrow fortifications. In their conceit, the Atlanteans considered themselves invulnerable to invasion, both because of the weapons and by virtue of their remote location so far from the lands of the barbarian races. The half-breeds with the bluish blood of the Deep Ones flowing coldly through their veins were content to run the affairs of the city, and wait and watch for their opportunity to overthrow the arrogant nobles. In secret they devised a plot with the foreign-born slaves and with the children of Dagon to overthrow Atlantis and slay all those of pure blood—for they reasoned that the nobles contributed nothing to the keeping of the island, and therefore served no purpose.
    A soul traveler to Atlantis through the portal beneath Irem emerges within the body of one of its inhabitants, but whether in the body of a slave, or a noble, or one of mixed blood is a matter of chance that cannot be controlled. The portal is so constructed that the visitor emerges in the mid-morning, and for several hours may observe the works of art