//------------------------------//
// The Horror in Clay 
// Story: Twilight's Inquiries Into Cthulhu 
// by RainbowsAreMagic 
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Dear Princess Celestia, 

The inability of ponies' minds to truly understand their contents is perhaps the most merciful thing in the world. We know little, and it is this ignoance which saves us; we are not meant to truly comprehend the infinite. While we have as yet been unharmed by our sciences, our experiments and forays into the realms of magic, a day shall come when some piecing together of all that we know might produce some understanding of our place within that infinite void. This great revelation would be one of such magnitude that we would then be forced to flee from such dangerous knowledge into a new age of primitive civilization, or else go mad. 

The most remote of those among us who research the unknown, who attempt to unravel the great myseries of the cosmos, have found hints of strangeness which chill the blood. We are but a moment in that great reality, nothing in comparison to that which lies beyond. And yet it was not those writings which gave me my own fateful glimpse into that forbidden truth, but rather my own realizations, my own accidental comprehension, as in all such flashes of understanding. In my own case, it was an old clipping from a newspaper, and the notes of a professor who himself lies dead today. I hope for all our sakes that nopony else draws the conclusions I have; indeed, I suspect my great-uncle would have destroyed the notes himself were it not for his sudden death.

My knowledge of all this began not long ago, with the death of my great-uncle Agil, an esteemed professor of ancient languages in the University of Fillydelphia. He was widely known as an expert in the field, and so his death is no doubt recalled by many. However, the most interesting thing about his passing was the cause. On his return home after a brief journey, he suddenly collapsed, dead, according to witnesses, who also note that an unfamiliar griffin had bumped into him just prior. While the official cause of death was a malady of his heart, perhaps set off by his ascent up a hill, and the coroner was unable to find any evidence to suggest otherwise. At the time, I thought this reasonable enough, but now, I am inclined to wonder.

As the professor had outlived his other surviving relatives, and my parents wanted nothing to do with the matter (Professor Agil was not held in especially high esteem in our family), it fell to me to go through his papers. To assist in this task, I had the entire collection shipped here to the library here in Ponyville, where I might peruse them easily. Most of the material was of the expected nature; correspodence with his peers in other institutions, various unpublished papers on languages lost long ago, and the like. However, one box confounded me. It was locked with both physical and magical protections; the latter of which I was able to bypass with a degree of ease. However, complex magical lock on the face of the thing defeated me time and again, until I finally discovered the key imbued within a ring which the Professor never let out of his sight. 

Within the box lay a strange sculpture, clearly of ancient form but modern origin. It was covered in script the likes of which I had never before seen, even among my great-uncles vast collection of work. Above them rose a most abhorrent image, for a moment reminding me of our old friend Discord, but immediately more sinister and monstrous. The spirit of the thing was such that it appeared to be some frightful combination of a pony, an octopus, and a dragon. Accompanying this strange artifact lay a number of press cuttings, and a document entitled, in large, clear letters, "CTHULHU CULT." It was a manuscript, divided into two parts, the first a study of dreams and the second regarding an Inspector Legrasse. The other papers included a collection of brief notes, from accounts of dreams to citations from obscure texts, and the rest comments on a number of hidden cults and secret societies, from the secretive Shadowbolts of the Everfree Forest to other cults, long forgotten by history. There were also a number of news clippings, mostly involving outbreaks of strange behavior and rare mental illnesses.

The first half of that primary manuscript explained the existance of the sculpture. A unicorn had sought out the Professor, it claimed, with this freshly-created artifact. He was a sculptor, attending the University of Fillydelphia at the time, and was regarded as somewhat strange by his peers. The pony had himself claimed to be psychically aware of the world around him, beyond the typical ability of all unicorns to sense magical fields, which was naturally considered a ridiculous idea. For this reason, most of his peers shunned him.

Now, this sculptor wanted the Professor's opinion on the meaning of the hieroglyphs present on the piece. It was understandable, given the freshness of the clay, that it had no archeological relevance, as new as it was. Yet, the young pony replied with such poetic words that my great-uncle was able to remember it, even years later. "It is new indeed," he said, "for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities, and dreams are older than any relic of ages past."
The young sculptor began his account of the dream, and from these records it is clear that the longer he spoke of the strange cities, the more entranced my great-uncle became, until he remembered his own strange experience the night before. There had been a minor earthquake, though the largest in that region for many years (and it would remain so for many years to come), and he had dreamed of great cities, filled with towering spires of solid rock, and buildings constructed from titanic stones. All this would have been much less worrying to him had it not also been for the sinister green slime dripping all around, the strange hieroglyphics covering the walls, and an uncanny sound. It was a voice, not a true voice but more of a sensation that was almost like sound, uttering forgotten words. The sculptor did his best to transcribe that uncanny voice into letters, ending up with an incomprehensible jumble of letters: "Cthulhu fhtagn".

It was this that most disturbed Professor Agil, and he quickly began to question the young pony, closely examining the artifact which the sculptor had found before him when he woke. The sculptor later said that my uncle had blamed his own old age for his slowness in recognizing the inscription and the image above it. The Professor had tried to establish a connection to any number of secret societies, promising silence in return for admission into them, until he was finally convinced that the unicorn was in fact unconnected with any of them. At this point he changed tack, instead asking for future reports of dreams, which the unicorn apparently provided.

The manuscript continued, describing dreams, always with that strange cityscape, and always with that voice shouting in that strange language from before. Abruptly, the reports had ended, and upon inquiring, the unicorn's family revealed that he had been stricken by madness. He was possessed of a wild delerium, including everything from the dreams before, along with some great creature, lumbering about, Never truly describing the creature, his ravings provided my great-uncle with enough information to convince him that the monster of the mad unicorn's delusion was one and the same as the one from the dream-wrought sculpture. 

After a week passed, the unicorn reported sat straight upright in bed, remembering nothing of what had occurred since the insanity had struck him. Thereafter, the sculptor was freed of the strange dreams from before, and no further references to him exist in the manuscript.

However, this was not the whole of that strange incident. Also included were references to other ponies with similar dreams, my great-uncle having quickly sought out anyone who might have been affected, through his vast network of contacts. The responses he recieved were not included, but Professor Agil's notes indicated a number of artists and poets who also experienced similar dreams both before and during the entire period of the incident, most strongly during the time of the sculptor's delirium. One case, that of a young architect, was truly sad. He was known for an interest in the strange and mysterious, and on the date of the sculptor's own madness, went violently insane, until he died some months later, screaming to be saved from some escaped horror. I was able to trace a few of these accounts, and confirmed their truth. The news cuttings described widespread cases of panicked behavior during this period. Dozens of zebras awaited some "great ending" that never came, while cults all over Equestria showed greatly increased activity. The griffin kingdom, too, was affected, filled with wild rumors and strange portents. It was a miracle that nopony noticed the troubles in the asylums, as severe as they were. All told, the cuttings held a strange and worrying tale.

My reason for telling you all of this is a simple one, which is that you, if nopony else, must be made aware of things such as these. I'm sure that you, as an ancient being yourself, will be able to accept the truths that the minds of other ponies could not. With that, I shall continue my inquiry into this "Cthulhu Cult" and find out what I may of the truth behind this strangeness.

Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle