Part IV: The Curse of Y’AH-Way
Chapter 7: The Eye is Blind
As Seth, Norea, and their mates grew into adulthood, it only got worse. I learned about their search for Eden, but by then it was too late to stop them. I didn’t want to destroy the Garden, and it was impossible to move it, so I had to rely on my magic to keep it concealed. Yet Seth and Norea’s relentless search for Eden’s hidden power was becoming a major nuisance.
Norea, in particular, had developed an almost prophetic insight, which made her increasingly difficult to manipulate. She began to gather a following, a group of believers among their small clan who were convinced that she held the key to returning to Eden.
The following prophecy was attributed to her.
“From the seed of Adam, a hero shall arise,
Born under the twin moons’ light.
With a heart pure as gold and strength unmatched,
He shall wield the sword of truth,
Uniting the scattered clans,
And breaking the chains of false gods.
Through tribulations great,
He shall lead us to a new dawn,
Where Terra shall be free,
And the true light shall shine once more.”
As you can imagine, I would not have taken kindly to this little ditty, had I known about it. Unfortunately it was a reed I never heard about until it was too late.
Meanwhile, Seth, with his natural leadership qualities, was building his own tribe and even sought to leave the valley to find new lands – and that was a big no-no!
Now since Seth and Norea had proven more difficult to tempt than Kane, my first thought was to try using the Eye of Seraphiel on them. Through its power I was able to see the threads of their destinies.
Although, curiously enough, they were not as easy to decipher as the fate lines of those mortals who had the stellarone souls I’d hand-picked. Even still I tried weaving Seth and Norea’s threads to my designs – my plan was to corrupt them by whispering dreams of ambition into their minds, eventually sowing the seeds of discord among them. I wanted to eventually guide one of them (perhaps Seth) to found a great city and install himself as king – consuming him with pride – whilst for the other (Norea) I sought to lead her to discover some some ancient relic in far away ruins (a worthless trinket whose magic I didn’t need). Each manipulation for them and their siblings would raise up new figures of power, their hearts tainted by greed and ambition, whilst others fell into ruin and despair. I could see it all – the chaos that would occur and the glory I could gain by controlling the course of human history as their God!
Imagine my surprise then when I discovered that The Eye of Seraphiel didn’t work on Seth, Norea, nor any of their kind!
Since they had stellarone souls that were not tortured by me they were apparently resistant to the magic of a fallen angel. To say I became irate at this discovery would be an understatement – quite frankly I wanted to wipe out the entirety of Adam’s family by turning them all to salt – and I nearly did.
But then I took a breath. Calmed down a bit, and realized that this was just a minor setback in the grand scheme of things. Not even a setback – more of a challenge – yes and a pleasant challenge at that. After all, where’s the fun if all my plans worked out without any effort? That’s boring. I need some resistance, something to fight against me.
If Seth and Norea wanted to be that challenge, I was up to the task.
It didn’t take me long to turn to one of my many backup plans — in this case, continuing to appear to Adam’s “beloved” children in the form of Yahway.
My first thought was to amplify my presence as Yahway, appearing more frequently and demanding greater sacrifices. I needed to keep Adam’s lineage under my control, and I felt the best way to do that was through fear and subjugation. I tried to demand blood sacrifices from them, hoping to instill a deep sense of dread and obedience, yet and I could never get them do overtly evil things like the kind Kane was keen on.
The best I could do was cloud their minds about the nature of what a ‘good’ god actually was. Therefore I was able to get them to believe in the oft-contradictory concepts that their Yahway [whom they believed was All-Knowing and All-Powerful] was in reality a jealous god who required total allegiance to the worship of himself alone, threatening destruction and desolation to any who challenged him, and demanding ever more sacrifice and suffering on the part of his chosen ones if they wanted to find The Way back to paradise and leave the misery of this world. [And seriously now, who wouldn’t want to worship a god like that?]
“Why do the blind fools accept such a paradox?” I often amused myself with this and similar questions after interacting with Seth and his clans – a people whose numbers had continued to swell over the years. “Alas, one can only conclude that I am simply too good at my job. The poor creatures really never had a chance, did they?”
Even still, I didn’t fool myself – for Seth and Norea continued to grow in influence and their defiance was infuriating. I tried to remind myself there was a thrill in the challenge they presented, but after a while it got to be frustrating. As I plotted my next move, I couldn’t help but wonder how much longer I could maintain my guise as Yahway without arousing suspicion. The more I pushed, the more resilient Seth, Norea, and even Eve became. It was a delicate balance, but one I was determined to master.
And then there was the issue around my own mental health. The fact is that I was greatly dissatisfied with the reality of my situation. If we’re being honest, I wasn’t happy. For more than anything else, I longed to step forward into the world as my true self — and to have the people of Terra worship me as their savior god — not Yahway, not Zebub, not El, not A’H, nor any other deity, real or imagined, but me, Azazel!
Unfortunately not all dreams come true. I was not so foolish as to forget that just because I wanted something, that didn’t mean I would get it – at least not immediately.
And there was only so far I could push the envelope. Because there were still a lot of other lumenarcs floating around The Middle Plane, I couldn’t risk word getting back to Illusia that the people of Terra were paying homage to me directly, so I had to be patient and use another end around tactic.
To take my mind off things I turned my attention back to Kane. Having taken everything away from him, I’d long since accomplished the task of getting Kane to hate his father’s god Yahway. It was time to introduce him to his new god, one that would promise him power and vengeance. This god would be the perfect tool to further my plans, a god crafted in the image of Kane’s deepest desires and darkest fears.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 