demeaculumn

'' all around were crumbling wall and broken columns, ... ahead stretched double rows of pillars, and the fragments and pedestals of pillars, that spoke of a broad and bygone street; ... far off at its end the pillars spread to mark a vast round plaza, and in that open circle there loomed gigantic under the lurid night clouds a pair of monstrous things.

'' huge winged lions of diarite they were, with blackness and shadow between them. full twenty feet they reared their grotesque and unbroken heads, and snarled derisive on the ruins around them ... they were the changeless guardians of the great abyss, and these dark ruins were in truth primordal sarkomand. ... fabled sarkomand with its black broken pillars and crumbling sphinx-crowned gates and titan stones and monstrous winged lions against the sickly glow of those luminous night clouds ...

'' ten feet apart crouched the mocking-faced beasts of diarite, brooding on cyclopean pedestals whose sides were chiseled in fearsome bas-reliefs. betwixt them was a tiled court with a central space ... in this space a black well opened, ... whose crusted and mouldy stone steps lead down to the crypts of nightmare. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

i: changeless guardian of diorite.