For reasons I do not yet understand, my Silver Key has remained inactive for the past few months - until last night that is, when my subtle, oneiric form was once again transported to a realm both of strange wonder and horror...
I found myself standing before a great hollow in the side of a gargantuan, snow-strewn peak in some far-distant, boreal clime. Feeling compelled to enter the nameless dark, I was drawn deeper and deeper into a labyrinthine system of caves which bored through the living rock beneath the mountain. Eventually I was drawn into a vast, subterrenean grotto, only partially illuminated by some kind of bluish phosphoresent fungus which had grown upon the walls, floors and ceilings of the place. With that faint light, I could observe deep channels carved in to the ground, along which flowed what appeared to be sentient streams of black slime. In the centre of the cavern stood a huge throne, upon which sleepily rested a bloated toad-like thing - one of the abhorrent monstrosities whose existence had been hinted at in certain scrolls and tomes of prehistoric, prehuman lore.
Arrayed at the feet of the throne were gold trinkets - offerings to the drowsing alien god-beast; one of these I retrived for closer inspection - but upon doing so the monstrous beast shifted lazily in its sleep, and began slowly opening one of its great red eyes...
I remember nothing more. However, on awakening this morning I found clutched to my breast a little golden idol of curious, toad-like demeanour...
(idol courtesy of Joe Broers)
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