"The Dark Eidolon" by Clark Ashton Smith

Thasaidon, lord of seven hells
Wherein the single Serpent dwells,
With volumes drawn from pit to pit
Through fire and darkness infinite —
Thasaidon, sun of nether skies,
Thine ancient evil never dies,
For aye thy somber fulgors flame
On sunken worlds that have no name,
Man's heart enthrones thee, still supreme,
Though the false sorcerers blaspheme.
-The Song of Xeethra

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After such a long recording session for "The Charnel God", there was no way I could immediately follow that with an even longer recording session for this story, so this was recorded in several sessions. If there are any obvious or abrupt changes in recording quality, ambient noise, etc., that is why.

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Eidolon: a spirit-image of a living or dead person; a shade or phantom look-alike of the human form

simoom: a strong, hot, dry, dust-laden wind

Canicule: Sirius, the Dog Star

capricole: This word, appearing both in my text and in the online text, does not seem to exist. Now there is the word "capriole", which is when a horse leaps from the ground and kicks out its hind legs at the peak of the leap. That would fit in this context, and is probably what was intended, but both my text and the online text use the word "capricole", so that's the word I read into the recording.

cope: in construction, cover (a joint or structure) with a coping (the covering course of a wall usually with a sloping top)

suzerain: a feudal overlord

paunch: a large or protruding abdomen or stomach

magistral: in this context: extremely effective

louting: bowing and scraping

farced: stuffed, as for roasting

chaps: in this context: the forepart of the face

hautboy: oboe

insupporable: unbearable. Note the online text linked to below replaces this word in 'insupportable', and indeed google really wants to pretend it doesn't know the word 'insupporable' and wants to redirect me to 'insupportable', but no, 'insupportable' is an insupportable substitution in this context.

pash: smash

haliotis: a genus (the type of the family Haliotidae) of gastropod mollusks comprising the abalones. Couldn't find any audio of this word being said, but I did find the IPA notation for it. Hope I got it right!

emmets: ants

The name Thasaidon is really killing me. Apparently I really want to pronounce it tha-say-don if I am not otherwise consciously thinking about it, yet the pronunciation I *really* want to use, which requires considerable conscious thought (or re-recording in edit) is 'tha-said-on'. Sometimes I even do 'tha-sigh-don'. Ugh. Anyways, given the frequency of use in this story, I really made the effort to make it consistent throughout. It's possible one or two of these alternate pronunciations may have slipped through, but hopefully not. Really wish Smith had left a pronunciation guide for us...

The picture used is an illustration by Clark Ashton Smith for the story's publication in Weird Tales

To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/212/the-dark-eidolon

The second half especially was very badly plagued with pops and mouth noises. It was so much that I just couldn't clean it up as well as I normally would, it got to be such a time-consuming bother. I edited out the worst of it, but not all of it. Sorry. If it were a shorter story I might have tried harder, but it's so long and was taking so much time to work through even to the degree I did, I just couldn't spare any more time for it.