"Vulthoom" by Clark Ashton Smith

gnomon: an object that by the position or length of its shadow serves as an indicator of the hour of the day, such as the pin of a sundial or a column or shaft erected perpendicular to the horizonShow more

stridor: noisy breathing that occurs due to obstructed air flow through a narrowed airway

ramify: form branches or offshoots

9 feet = 274 cm; 10 feet = 305 cm; 11 feet = 335 cm

using radioactive metal or stone for lighting... Aaah, the 1930s, before the dangers of such things were fully comprehended by the general public!

antholite: A fossil plant, like a petrified flower

verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real

houris: a beautiful young woman, especially one of the virgin companions of the faithful in the Muslim Paradise

cicerone: a guide who conducts sightseers. It appears both the soft 'c' (i.e. 's' sound) or a hard 'ch' should are acceptable for the letters 'c' in this word. The 'ch' would of course be truer to the original Latin, while the softer 's' sound would be more in line with how you expect English-speakers to Anglicize foreign words. I went with the soft 's', you might expect something else, blame the English language for being a mess.

menhir: a tall upright stone of a kind erected in prehistoric times in western Europe

Cimmerian: I'm going to go with the Greek mythological meaning here (where Greek Cimmerians were a member of a mythical people living in perpetual mist and darkness near the land of the dead), not the anthropological one (which Cimmerians would be an ancient nomadic people who overran Asia Minor in the 7th century BC). So: relating to or characteristic of the mythical Cimmerians or the perpetual mist and darkness in which they lived

Avernus: a volcanic crater near Cumae, Italy, in the region of Campania west of Naples

trimurti: the trinity of supreme divinity in Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva)

veridical: truthful; coinciding with reality

The picture used is "Excess from mars alien city" by ghosttribe, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/).

It's a city on Mars. A bridge on a city on Mars, no less! We aren't given much suggestion in the story of what the Martian architecture is like, but I thought this was cool. There are various depictions of Vulthoom, but many of them are very anime like and not much to my liking, so I ended up with this instead.

The follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/239/vulthoom