Things little known to scholars and sages
Live outside the bounds of normality,
Slipping in and out of the mundane world
Like pallid spectres and fleeting shadows.

Determined to seek the ultimate truth,
I delve into forsaken ancient tomes
And construct many arcane devices
To uncover dark, forbidden secrets.

Glimmering power surges through the air
As I recite a cabalistic spell.
My fell machines pulse with electric life
As a portal opens between the planes.

A grey mist streaked with gold envelops me.
Spectral streams flow through the eldritch ether.
Strange creatures float past on rainbow currents
As I drift aimlessly through that weird realm.

Disturbed by my odd alien presence,
Dreadful ebon forms gather around me.
Amorphous limbs brush against my body;
Their algid touch courses right through my soul.

Then the wraiths flee in a frightful flurry
As a bloated beast rears up from the murk.
A pale, wretched face wreathed in tentacles
Fixes its fiery red eyes upon me.

Its lips part in a parody of speech.
A serpentine tongue lolls out of its maw.
The heaving horror spits sulphurous spume
As it seeks to extinguish my life force.

I fly from the gaze of that monstrous fiend,
But my flight is slowed by a clutching mire.
I struggle across the glowing threshold
And narrowly escape madness and death.