"The Doom of Antarion" by Clark Ashton Smith

0:00:00 Chapter 1
0:07:04 Chapter 2
0:13:35 Chapter 3
0:20:01 Chapter 4
0:26:59 Chapter 5
0:31:20 Chapter 6

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Melchior... here's a name that is a real name, but which I can't find any universal agreement on how to pronounce. Why? Why are there so many words in English that nobody can agree how to pronounce? WHY?! It'd be one thing if it were just regional variations in accents, but that's not the problem. No, people just have no idea at all, because English doesn't have consistent and reliable pronunciations for letters or diphthongs or combinations of letters. One of the word offenders is 'ie' vs. 'ei', which in English can both be pronounced in exactly the same ways, which can be any of 3 or more different sounds. WTF English? Gawd, what a mess of a language. And yet, still better than French... And don't bother asking AI how to pronounce Melchior - for all the plausible variations in pronunciation I am hearing, AI will give you a pronunciation which is undeniably, hideously, laughably wrong. Ugh.

Cimmerian: In Greek mythology, a member of a mythical people living in perpetual mist and darkness near the land of the dead. So: relating to or characteristic of the mythical Cimmerians or the perpetual mist and darkness in which they lived.

crepuscular: resembling or relating to twilight

selenic: of, relating to, or like the moon. Apparently that second 'e' can be either long or short. *sigh* The more words I come across that have multiple valid pronunciations like this, the more I hate English. If only German would get rid of all that declension (English did!), it might actually be a better language. At least it has a high degree of phoeneticism to it, which is highly desirable. Necropole, just a few sentences later, also appears to have several pronunciation options, in particular the second 'o' can be long or short. *head desk*

sybarite: a person who is self-indulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury

fescennine: scurrilous; licentious; obscene. And oh look, another word with multiple accepted pronunciations, where that 'i' in the last syllable can be a long 'e' sound or a long 'i' sound. Why, English? Why?

At this point, dictionaries should just not bother giving pronunciations at all, if every pronunciation possible is going to be accepted as valid. They need to stop accepting every possible pronunciation and just let some people be wrong in how they are saying certain words. Oy vey!

lentor - slowness

The picture used is of the Necropolis in Tlos, Turkey. Photo by Gerhard Huber, used here under the Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en).

I know, the story says the architecture was unlike anything that could be found on Earth, but finding images of fantastical necropoli that are in arid environs and are not just pure evil, well, I couldn't do it.

The follow along: https://archive.org/stream/XiccarphClarkAshtonSmithLennySAMouse/Xiccarph - Clark Ashton Smith (LennyS-aMouse)_djvu.txt

A bit of a romance, eh? Not something we expect from Smith, but there you go!

There are actually a number of videos here on youtube that speculate what would happen to the earth if the sun went out, or if the Earth somehow got kicked out of the solar system. They all agree our doom wouldn't be nearly so instantaneous as suggested in this story.