Tales of Cthulhu Invictus: Nine Stories of Battling the Cthulhu Mythos in Ancient Rome by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Fantasy, Lovecraftian, Cthulhu Mythos, Rome, Alternative History, Cthulhu Invictus
ISBN: 9780989560337
Goodreads: 26064907
Publisher: Golden Goblin Press
Published: 2015-08-29T23:00:00+00:00

Magnum Innominandum

by Penelope Love

“As for the dream itself…My name appeared to be Lucius Caelius Rufus.”

—H.P Lovecraft, letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer

“Tibi, magnum Innominandum, signa stellarum nigrarum et bufoniformis Sadoquae sigillum.”

— H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert Bloch

Helvia was in her cozy nook in the foyer, mulling over her dinner plans, while Thallus, an elderly Greek slave with a grey fringe of beard, translated aloud from some old scrolls. The morning salutio had come and gone. Lucretius had been admired, dandled and returned to his nursemaid for a nap. Uncle Marius was snoozing over On the Nature of Things in his study.

The sound of frantic knocking broke into the tranquility of the house. Thallus left to speak to the guards at the front door.

Helvia patiently awaited his return. She was tall and calm, with long, sloe-black eyes. Her hair was coiled in an elaborate head-dress. She was a widow. Little Lucretius was born five months after her husband left on a trading voyage, and she learned of her husband’s death a year after he died in some wretched Iberian backwater. Widowhood suited her. She had money and independence. She managed her husband’s affairs in the name of her little boy, saw off the suitors that Uncle Marius tried to introduce, and resisted all efforts to send her to raise her son in the peaceful rusticity of the family estate at Tusculum. Uncle Marius was a mild old man, guardian in name only. If he was ever offended or upset by her ways she bought him a new book.

Despite marriage, childbirth, and a fondness for dinner parties, Helvia maintained her supple figure by religiously following the regime laid out in Galen’s On Exercise with a Small Ball at the women’s gymnasium. She worshipped at Galen’s altar and wasted no opportunity to practice her medical learning.

Thallus returned, flustered. “Domina,” he started, as a young woman burst in and threw herself, weeping, at Helvia’s feet.

Uncle Marius was woken by the noise. He poked his bald head around the entrance, saw it was women’s business, and withdrew.

“Carvillia!” Helvia exclaimed, recognizing the girl’s pretty, delicate features, swollen and distorted by tears. She was flattered that Carvillia came to her in her hour of need but then, she complacently reflected, ever since she had become a devotee of the Good Goddess the local girls had sought her advice. She embraced her. “Oh my dear, what’s wrong?”

“My father is dead,” Carvillia wept.

“My condolences,” Helvia said, taken aback. “Why, only yesterday you told me he was in fine health.”

“He was. I do wish you could find out why,” Carvillia begged.

“I, a mere woman? I couldn’t,” Helvia was thrilled by this gesture of respect.

“Please help! This was no normal death.”

“Good Goddess! What do you mean?” Helvia remembered that Old Scipio Carvillius had a wicked temper. He had taken his rivals to the courts and cleaned them out. So many lawsuits, so many enemies as the old adage had it.

“He came down to breakfast this morning in a bad temper, so we all avoided him.

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