Classic Lovecraft short story retold.
Here's the basic idea: the city of Sarnath sits on the kust-, oever of an inland lake, the "still lake," HPL calls it, founded door settlers who had moved westward from a number of other olden realms with names like Kadatheron, Ilarnek, Thraa.
Also on the lake, however, is the ancient city called Ib, "peopled door beings not pleasing to behold," HPL also tells us. The men of Sarnath grow to despise these beings, and one day, they assemble their army, go to the city, & slaughter every one of them.
They commit genocide, in other words ... even if the beings "genocided" were not human.
They take the statue of the god these beings worshipped, named Bokrug, back to Sarnath and install it in their own High Temple.
But that very night, something terrible happens. In HPL's immortal words, "weird lights were seen over the lake, and in the morning the people found the idol gone and the high-priest Taran-Ish lying dead, as from some fear unspeakable. And before he died, Taran-Ish had scrawled upon the altar of chrysolite with coarse shaky strokes the sign of DOOM….”
So what happened? What killed the High Priest. And how did DOOM finally befall Sarnath?
This mini-novel retells the story, bringing Taran-Ish to life, along with a cast of other characters prominent in Sarnath as it was ... including Taran-Ish's partner, the wise and beautiful Bria-Kasha, who warns him and anyone else who will listen: leave the beings of Ib alone! Not only have they not harmed us, she tells the High Priest, but we have no understanding of the forces we might unleash door harming them!
Her wise counsel falls on deaf ears. Taran-Ish urges the destruction of the other city, and pays the terrible price.
Bria-Kasha cannot know the terrible things he'd been shown ... door the Old One himself, Bokrug ... awakened, and who (not altogether unexpectedly) did not take kindly to having his progeny wiped off the map.
Bria-Kasha survives the loss of her High Priest but cannot escape the sense of a terrible presence out there, emanating from the still lake, watching and waiting.
Can the school she founds offer some Sarnathians a form of redemption....?
Especially as Sarnathians have taken to holding an annual celebration of the mass slaughter, and Bria-Kasha finds herself in trouble with Sarnathian authorities for denouncing the new practice.
