Book I: Genesis Revisited
Chapter 3: Illusia – Evil’s Prison of Hell
Hearing Zebub admit that It wanted to escape the creations of It’s hated rival A’H, I was ready with a solution so I asked, “Oh Great Zebub, perhaps you dislike this universe because you know that Illyria still exists within its every fiber?”
“You mean because every fiber is filled with A’H.” Zebub raged.
“It’s true – The Great Deceiver’s fingerprints are everywhere.” Lucifer agreed. “How can we be expected to overcome that?”
They say the first step to overcoming a problem is to admit it exists – my master and his minion had finally taken that step, and I was ready with a solution, “Alas, A’H’s fingerprints are everywhere; I feel it too, My Lords. Yet perhaps Ye would like to create a new plane of existence – one that is bigger even than this middle plane, one that is free from the confines of The Firmament, and most importantly one which is filled entirely by you?”
As soon as I said it, I could sense that Zebub knew this was the answer. Inspired by his father, Lucifer hastily rounded up every lumenarc that had joined him in the rebellion back in Illyria [which unfortunately included me too] and in the blink of an eye we all vanished from your universe before I had time to explain my idea further.
Then it was that Zebub and Lucifer created their own plane of existence — their dimension far bigger than Illyria or the Middle Plane. More importantly, they were successfully able to ensure that it had no semblance of A’H anywhere inside it [or so they believed]. You may choose to think of this spectrum as Hell, but for the purposes of this story, we shall call it Illusia.
Although your puny little minds could never comprehend the science behind it all, I’ll at least point out a few things – first off, it’s not a matter of Illyria behind “above” the middle plane and Illusia ‘below.’ Your thinking there is too linear. The planes of existence don’t work that way. And just so you know, when you die, you don’t go ‘up’ to heaven or ‘down’ to hell. Again, the math is all wrong with that line of thinking.
Yes, even though there was a physical Firmament or Dome that surrounded the portion of the universe in the middle plane where sits Terra, that barrier was also more than just physical in the sense of plain matter and energy, for it extended beyond the physical universe in which you live, and instead covered all the planes — think of it like a multiverse if you will. That Firmament may appear to you on Terra as a dome, yet in reality it was so many other ‘forms’ too – in so many dimensions – all of them accomplishing the same goal – to prevent The Fallen Ones from returning to Illyria.
Oh, it’s pointless for me to go down this path, I can see you can’t understand. Hell, you probably don’t even know what a Tesseract is, and I know your mind is locked within a viewpoint limited by the lower single digit dimensions so let’s just move on. If you want to think of illusia being the underworld that’s fine, I realize your mind is hopelessly limited – but you have Lucifer to thank for that shortcoming.
In any case, there we all were on Illusia. And with Zebub’s blessing Lucifer then installed himself as the “King” of Illusia.
Yes that was a bit annoying – but truth be told, everything else worked out rather swimmingly as far as I was concerned — for just as I had hoped, during the process of creating Illusia, it turned out that Zebub had foolishly allowed Lucifer to had put so much of Zebub’s essence into their new dimension that eventually there was no way to separate Evil from Illusia or Illusia from Evil.
Too late did they realize that Zebub had become trapped!
Or should I say double-trapped? For not only was It barred from Illyria by the Firmament, but now it was stuck inside Illusia by it’s own design. Hahaha – what a fool!
Then it was that Zebub tried to break out of Its unexpected prison — and failed!
Zebub raged. Lucifer roared. Yet before The Evil One or his son could remember that I was the one who had given them the idea to create Illusia, I came forward with a solution. “I know how to break Zebub free of Illusia!”
“How?” Lucifer seethed.
“It would appear that A’H is jealous of you and your father, Master.” Sensing Lucifer’s annoyed confusion I quickly continued, “The Great Deceiver could never create the beauty that is Ilusia, so when It sensed the work of your hand, It surely had Michael and your Illuminati brothers secretly lock us in this dimension. Yet I’ve discovered a way that will not only help Zebub break free – but will also help you get your final revenge on A’H.”
“Tire me not with your riddles, Azazel. Tell me your plan or risk destruction!”
“Send your most loyal lumenarcs back to Terra. Allow them to destroy it. Then th–”
“What will that accomplish?” Lucifer interrupted, “My father will still be trapped here! Are you th–”
Sensing myself on the edge of oblivion, I took a risk and interrupted my master, “Zebub will break free!” I cowered down in fear, certain that the demon lord would use <The Power of Ze> to destroy me for my impudence.
Shockingly nothing happened; so I continued. “I apologize for my interruption, Lord, but my plan is sound – consider that The Middle Plane wherein Terra resides is still associated with A’H and his Firmament is there. If we destroy Terra surely the Firmament will fall in upon itself – then we’ll break the ties that bind A’H to that universe – and thus break the bonds that hold Zebub here.”
Lucifer remained silent, so I proceeded to detail my plan, “A’H is the essence of Goodness. Zebub is the essence of Evil. It comes down to a battle of supremacy and the only place to have that battle is within the Firmament that the Great Deceiver built to imprison us. Therefore send your lumenarcs back to Terra, task them with destroying all that is Good in that world. When they succeed, the very center of that universe will be destroyed, The Firmament will collapse, and thus the locks that hold Zebub here will fail. The Evil One will break free, and then we’ll storm the gates of Illyria and overthrow The Great Deceiver!”
The Prince of Darkness pondered, consulting with Zebub during the interim.
Truth be told, I was making this all up on the fly. I mean I was pretty sure we could destroy Terra – after all we built the damn thing – but I had no idea if that would do anything at all to damage the Firmament – I mean why would it? But I had to do something, right? So trying to appear casual, I thought it best to add, “As your most loyal lumenarc, naturally I will remain by your side in Illusia to help you direct events, while my brethren return to The Middle Plane do the work we command them to.”
The suggestion was not what Lucifer had expected, “Dost thou not believe in your own plan? Do you fear to get your hands dirty, Azazel” And he began to laugh bitterly, believing I was deceiving him.
Now, while I WAS indeed deceiving him, I didn’t want him to know that, so I said, “On the contrary, I’m confident that my plan will succeed, however I thought you would want me to remain here to advise you?”
“You’re walking a thin line, Azazel. Careful.” The prince of Illusia warned, even as I could feel Zebub’s essence suddenly boring into me – searching for deception – thankfully I’d long since sequestered those motives. At last Lucifer advised, “I don’t need your advice, fool. And bother me not with your details. YOU shall be among the first to return to the middle dimension. There your gang shall do the work of your plan. And you WILL succeed in securing my father’s release. If you fail, it will mean your doom.”
In a flash I was back in your universe, even to your world, along with untold numbers of my colleagues who were sent with me — all with the same mission: “Destroy that which was Good. Destroy Terra. And Destroy The Firmament!”
I rejoiced when I returned to your earth, although I’m not sure your world felt the same way. When last I left Terra, there was but a single land mass on the planet, but my (re)entry back to your work was not without some fanfare — I exploded through the interior of your world in such a fashion that I caused certain geological ‘disturbances’ – sorry, Gaia. In fact so powerful was my return that the original “Pangea” land mass that Gaia made broke apart into numerous chunks, even as numerous mountain ranges, oceans, and volcanoes emerged above and below the waters of your world.
Additionally many of the living creatures of your world were destroyed by the effects of my return, but thankfully Gaia was a trooper and your world recovered.
Millions of years passed again, but eventually I watched as Gaia+Terra teemed with life again – this time the old gal surprised me by putting forth prehistoric giants to roam your world. It was all downright magical, if you want to know the truth.
And all the while I studied the process of Life.
Thus it was that my plan continued to unfold. I’d successfully gotten rid of Zebub. Now I just had to make sure I could get rid of his son for good too. Over time I came up with another idea.
But first I had a bit of a problem to deal with — for starters, Lucifer wasn’t as dumb as I’d hoped. When he released the other lumenarcs and I back to the Middle Plane, he built a fail safe into the process that kept us tied to him — he could have Zebub recall us to Illusia at any time, or we could return back on our own if we had important news to report [although I don’t know anyone who would want to willingly go back there], but perhaps most importantly, no matter what, we lumenarcs could only survive for a maximum of 1,000 years on the Middle Plane before we were required to return to our maker. I mean, a measly millennia? What’s up with that? It’s like the blink of an eye to a deity like me and it was downright cruel – but it was also my reality.
Now to be clear, our loss of life force was never an issue while Zebub was with us in The Middle Plane or when we were with It in Illusia, but once we lived in different dimensions, our life force began to slowly dwindle. Lucifer claimed this was due to a flaw in A’H’s original creation of the lumenarcs – and since we couldn’t very well ask A’H if that was true, we had to accept the Illusian Prince’s assertion. We were told that lumenarcs could only survive for about ten centuries on our own before we had to return to the source of their creation to replenish our <lifeforce>. Lucifer also claimed his father was the cause of us lumenarcs’ creation and thus the source of our life force — therefore if we wanted to continue surviving when our ever-dwindling life force supply ran out, we had to return to Illusia to beg Lucifer to allow his father to give us more.
The Dark Lord called his life force <hellfire> and the process required for us to get more was anything but enjoyable — imagine your worst vision of what it’s like to be tortured and multiply that by infinity, then maybe you’ll have the least bit of insight into what I had to endure. Some lumenarcs were destroyed by this process. Thankfully for me, I was always able to endure it – and more importantly to convince the demon prince to keep returning me to this dimension — but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.
After a few million more years of this, I finally devised a plan to get back at my (hated) master.
Even though Zebub was locked in Illusia, there was a time when Its son was not. As a result, Lucifer could (and often did) visit The Middle Plane. For eons it seemed that neither A’H, Michael, or anyone from Illyria cared about this plane of existence anymore, and since Lucifer had <The Power of Ze> at his disposal, Lucifer was for all intents and purposes not just any ‘god’ but instead THE ‘God’ of this dimension – and he demanded that we treat him as such.
He even changed his name yet again, soon calling himself “El” whenever he visited our plane of the universe. And for some reason he insisted on calling the rest of us lumenarcs his ‘Elohim’ which he explained was some ‘plural’ version of himself – it was a de facto attempt by Lucifer to essentially rewrite history as he was now claiming that we were all part of ‘his’ creation.
Rather than argue, I played along with Lucifer’s little game, stroking his ego as I said, “Look at the work of your hand, El. Admire all that you have created in this universe over the eons.”
Our God saw that it was good and he was pleased.
Sensing my opportunity, I told El I was making progress on the plan to free his father but that I needed his help with the next step.
“Shall We create more – for old times sake?” And before my master could ponder my request to the fullest, I added, “Why not perfect your power by creating something more wonderful than anything this world has ever seen before — perhaps something called… Mankind.”
And thus I laid a trap that would forever alter History and eventually led to YOUR creation…
The Apocrypha of Azazel 