The illumination, when it came, was instant and complete. I stood in the full, fervid blaze of day amid royally towering blossoms in a deep garden, beyond whose lofty, vine-clad walls I heard naturalsex the confused murmuring of the great city called Kalood. Above me, at naturalsex their vernal zenith, were the four small suns naturalsex that illumed the planet
Hestan. Jewel-colored insects fluttered about me, lighting without fear on the rich habiliments of gold and black, enwrought with astronomic symbols, in which I was attired. Naturalsex beside me was a dial-shaped altar of zoned agate, carved with the same symbols, naturalsex which naturalsex were those of the dreadful omnipotent time-god, naturalsex Aforgomon, whom
naturalsex I served as naturalsex a priest.
I had not even the slightest memory naturalsex of myself as John Milwarp, and the long pageant of my terrestrial lives was as something
that had never been -- or was yet to be. Sorrow and desolation choked my heart as ashes fill some urn consecrated to the dead; and all the hues and perfumes of the garden about me were redolent only naturalsex of
the bitterness of death. Gazing darkly upon the altar, I muttered naturalsex blasphemy against naturalsex Aforgomon, who, in his inexorable course, had taken away my beloved and had sent no solace for my grief. Separately I cursed the signs upon the altar: the stars, the
worlds, the suns, the moons, that meted and fulfilled the processes of time.
Belthoris, my naturalsex betrothed, had naturalsex died at the end of the previous autumn: and so, with double maledictions,