Steeder, man, and boy emerged from the long dark tunnel. The dried canal bore them along to a strange sight.

The nameless city nestled in a cleft of two great canyon walls joining at the bottom of Noctis Labyrinthus, like a spindle-legged thirsty spider curled up in a shadowy corner.

Spiked porous towers pierced the sky at odd angles, like sharp thorns made of yellow coral reef. Not a single wall stood straight. Each wound around the center of the city, carving a crooked path, each tilted as if on the verge of falling over. Though somewhat smooth surfaces, most design elements ended in a rigid edge or sharp point.

The many edifices bothered Tracy. It took him some time to determine why. Then he knew. While it was obvious none of the structures were natural occurrences, none of them held shapes he could name, as if intended to be forms of pure chaos, ruins of a lost aeon. The narrow alien apertures stood tall and slender, as if designed for creatures much taller and much thinner than a normal human. As Tracy pondered how these types of creatures might appear, his mind could only conjure images of decrepit beings elongated past the point of recognition of anything he was familiar with.

The various irregular holes in every surface seemed designed to catch even the faintest of breezes so that ambient dissonant notes sighed from them like thistled organ pipes.

Intricate details, symbols, and patterns were etched into every surface, overwhelming the eye. The small, thin-lined designs failed to feature focal points—everything stood distinct and yet ran together in a staggering way. The level of detail to craft each line was apparent, and that left Tracy disturbed as his mind grasped for meaning and found none. The contortions left him feeling twisted up inside, sick to his stomach.

Darkness eclipsed light. Dusk and dawn merged, locking the city in an eternal stillness of strange and alien illumination. His perceptions of depth and degree fled, so that he was never quite sure how near or far objects stood. This in turn bent his sense of time and place. And yet for all the ignorance, for all the things he did not know about this place, he knew it by name. It stroked his mind, like a phantom's whisper.

Carcosa.

He patted the boy, to comfort Ashton, and they both relied on the stalwart steed beneath them as a firm support, a source of comfort. Chasm was too simple of a beast and too noble of a stallion to be bothered by the likes of an eldritch city not built by human hands. Though even he trotted in with caution.

Together the three of them braved the city. Soon the distant mumbling of incoherent voices reached Tracy's ears. They were not alone. Roy and his followers roamed the city too. If Tracy were a betting man, he'd wager Roy would find some immense chamber, a place where he could revel in the echoes of his own mad voice. Tracy delved deeper still.

They trotted through the crumbled walls, teetering towers, and under the shadow of a gaunt citadel until they stopped in front of a building shaped like an octahedron, a massive crown diamond set in the center of Carcosa, the alien epicenter. They entered the elongated archway between two twisted obelisks. Dirge-like chanting and elated cries bounced off of the old stone walls. Roy and his followers lurked inside.

The slanted walls of the tall corridors met in a point at the top, so high up, that had Chasm been three times bigger, he still would have fit. In fact, Tracy imagined Roy and his cultic followers might have piloted their speeders right inside the antechamber if they wanted.

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The corridor ended at a balcony with no rails, overlooking a vast chamber, the center of the three-dimensional diamond temple. The four slanted walls met at the top of the ceiling, like the inside of a hollow pyramid, while below Tracy, the walls descended, drawing closer together, meeting at a central point at the bottom, a mirrored upside down inversion of the top half of the echoing room.

Steps hewn in solid rock trailed down the sides of the slanted walls, like a stadium. In the exact center of the lower half of the chamber, all stairways joined from the four sides of the room, meeting at a four-sided plateau, as it were.

Roy stood tall at the pinnacle of the platform, now hooded in a sacrilegious tattered cloak, arms raised high, yelling blasphemous proclamations in a shrill voice, looking down the steps on the followers, those abasing themselves as they chanted on and on.

Tracy observed for a time, an arm thrown across Ashton, as if to ward off the mad echoes streaming from the fugitive. Strange moonlight from Phobos and Deimos beamed in from apertures cut into the ceiling overhead, casting odd shadows on the rostrum.

From the other three walls, tentacled feline monstrosities prowled, leaping down from similar ledges like the one Tracy perched on. This time their tentacles didn't wriggle, but were coiled around thick shapes they carried on their backs. As they neared Roy and the cult, Roy stroked their muscled flanks, like they were familiar loyal pets. Their tendrils uncoiled, disposing the fresh victims.

At first the lawman thought they were worshipping Roy, but as he watched, Roy seemed more and more like a choir director, leading some crazed shrieking song, directed not at himself, but the massive centerpiece of the dais, the long narrow rostrum.

And then it hit Tracy like a pallet of bricks falling off of a dropship ramp. He'd seen the rostrum before. In a dream. No, a nightmare.

Waves of déjà vu bathed his senses as the choir song reached a crescendo. The top of the rostrum shifted, revealing that it was in fact a shuttle-sized coffin.

Fire and ice roiled through Tracy's veins. He pulled Ashton close, burying the boy's face against his torso, shielding him from the abominable horror. Weird sensations of both trembling and admiration filled him, quickening his breath.

Slowly, a slender eldritch emaciated giant rose from the open sarcophagi. Instead of screaming in shared terror, Roy's followers fell at the feet of the decrepit titan, paying blasphemous homage to an alien daemon.

Why didn't they run? Why didn't they flee?

Then Tracy understood. Just as he was drowning in unseen waves of tangible fear emanating from the thing, the servants were basking in that same aura, but for them it was a numbing sensation of awe and wonder. Pure, misguided ecstasy.

Roy wasn't the shepherd they assumed him to be. He was the sacrificial pagan priest, making a mass offering on the altar of his god. He'd led the sheep straight into the slaughterhouse.

And they adored him for it.