Like a dragon of rot and venom, it sludges around in swamps and bogs. The water boils beneath its feat, and dealthy things are given life. Great hoary things once were called back by Kiran, and in Ulthar they whisper of a strange city which once was called Zoog, or the City of Zoogs. Some say it was a swarthy city of evil mists in the Westward Sea, and legend says it was burnt when the gray gods struck it with their meteor. No man treads it now, for the stones are too tarnished for walking. Those who have dwelt in Ulthar say Zoogs is but a fancy name for such a place; though they are fair in Ulthar to accost one who ventures to climb up the aela-roofed steps to the top. So it was not by luck that Aran and his company were sighted by Roodmas a-phone--starving, plank-walking in the gaunt slime of pools and sunless cliffs, when a shapeless horde of slimy horrors ensued from weird and mist-hazed lands. It is of these slimy horrors that poor Roodmas can be sure his prayers will be answered. For hours they walk in the tarnished twilight, tiptoeing over thin ledges that seem to reach up to the stars and into the space beyond.