Whatever Gods May Be Read Online Free Page A

was the first city ever founded after the Day of the Little One, and it was the largest.  Zolansville had come much later, and therefore had some catching up to do in terms of population.  Both cities lay only thirty miles from one another, on either side of the enormous mountains that cut off the desert from the ocean.  Still primitive, their peoples only advanced to the comparable age of Bronze in Old Earth history, New Phillips and Zolansville formed ostensibly the new cradle of civilization.  Though human beings littered the planet to some degree or another, roving in packs for protection against the still ferocious, mutated temperament of nature, it was here, in these two places, that the seed of learning and restoration had begun to take place in an orderly, disciplined fashion.  John Phillips had started the wheel turning, while Zolan had contributed axles and a carriage five centuries after Phillips had died.  Thalick would finish the monumental job of tutoring following Zolan's demise, but it had been the collective heritage that these three extraordinary teachers had passed on to humanity, that would insure its survival for ten thousand centuries to come.
    Like Zolan and Thalick, Phillips had been a time traveler.  An Earthman from the civilization that had brought the world to ruin, Phillips had been abducted by the unholy Dark and delivered to his planet several million years into its blackest future.  It was a world, John Phillips quickly discovered, out of a Lovecraftian novel; a place of monsters; a place of demons; a place of death.
    The War had doused the Earth with radiation and plague and had nearly rendered it impossible for Man's survival.  The great upheavals of continents and seas, coupled with infernal wind and heat storms lashing across the far corners of the globe had destroyed nearly all forms of animal life.  Man slinked through the poisoned centuries like a dying snake, barely able to spawn new generations to insure the preservation of the race.  He became primitive and savage, forgetting the gifts of tongues that his more brilliant and ultimately more destructive ancestor had bequeathed him.  Physically, he grew bigger, but to the same proportion, he became weaker and his intellect diminished with neglect.  Most tragic of all, after a million years of racial perseverance, Man's only reward in the end appeared to be death.
    The War had been responsible for Earth's destruction, yet an ultimately more devastating force had appeared.  The Dark.  A formless entity of blackness, it had cloaked the world like a shroud on the day of the War.  Long after the mushroom clouds and fallout had dissipated, the shadow of the Dark continued to foul the Earth with unspeakable horror.  A kind of universal cesspool, the Dark was a portal to unseen dimensions which acted like a great wad of cosmic fly paper, sucking in and spewing out everything that came near it.  For Thalick, Phillips and Zolan, the Dark had been a terrible trap.  But for the parasitical Redeyes, a door to freedom had materialized - and yet another predator of humanity was on the loose.
    A monstrous import from the dankest corners of the Dark's domain, the Redeyes had reigned unchallenged on Earth for a millennia.  When Thalick and his followers became marooned on Earth, they were able to provide committed, if not largely ineffective, protection to the human survivors.  But by this time, the Redeyes had existed aboard the planet for two hundred centuries, and had occupied the dead cities of Man like vermin.  They had glutted themselves so much on the human game, that when Thalick and his small band of star travelers arrived, Man numbered only a few thousand over the entire world.
    The vampires could do little against the Thelerick Stingers and within a century, the small colony of men under their protection became the largest food target on the planet for the voracious Redeyes.  For thousands of years, the Stingers continued