"The Acolyte of the Flame (A Translation of Fragment MXI of the Pnakotic Manuscripts)" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by the late American author Lin Carter, first published in the Yuletide 1985 issue of Crypt of Cthulhu by Cryptic Press.
Synopsis[]
In the last days of Hyperborea, as the ice sheet advances and renders all the northern lands uninhabitable, a group of men known as the Pnakotic Brethren persist in their mission to preserve and expand upon the historical records first compiled by the Great Race of Yith.
One of the archivists, named Athlok, translates a passage which blames the ice age on Aphoom-Zhah, the Cold Flame, a son of Cthugha who descended to Earth from Neptune and was imprisoned by the Elder Gods under the ice mountain, Yarak, at the north pole. The passage also contains the prophecy of a Voormi shaman who claimed that a "Savior" would come bearing a mark on his chest like a grey flame. Athlok himself has a grey flame-shaped birthmark and concludes that the prophecy refers to him.
Despite being conflicted by the existence of another prophecy that claims that the whole of Hyperborea would indeed be engulfed by ice, Athlok hopes to be able to save his homeland. He drinks the golden mead and summons the Byakhee to take him to Yarak, then enters a cave at the base of the mountain that leads him to an abyss where he finds a star-shaped stone and breaks it. But rather than destroying Aphoom-Zhah as he expected, this act liberates the monster, causing Athlok to flee and the glaciers to expand before covering the entire continent. Too late does Athlok realize his error, in that the prophecy referred to the "Savior" of Aphoom-Zhah, not of Hyperborea.
Reasoning that no punishment could ever be proportional to the crime he committed, the Pnakotic Brethren simply order Athlok to write down his narrative and add it to the archives, so that history will know that he was the one who doomed the whole continent.
Publication History[]
Since its first appearance in Crypt of Cthulhu, "The Acolyte of the Flame" has also been included in Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu Fiction anthology The Book of Eibon (2002).
Trivia[]
- "The Acolyte of the Flame" marks the first appearance of the Great Old One Aphoom-Zhah.