Book I: The Search for Dagaal
Chapter 2: Visions of Death
OK, I’ll be honest – there was no real danger that I was actually dying at the time — for back then Illusian <hellfire> was more than enough to sustain me — it just didn’t FEEL that way to me.
Inside, my soul desperately yearned for other souls to feed upon. Yes, to be factual about the matter, I knew that this “life” I craved was stolen from the poor mortals of Terra, but that was beside the point — for as Death, I was a god, and as far as I was concerned my needs superseded those of any mortal. Quite simply, (back then) I viewed all life on Terra as my food source, as samples for my experiments, and more often than not BOTH.
Returning from Illusia, I knew I had a job to do — for Baal-Zebub (aka. Lucifer) had only released me again with the understanding that I would use the warped powers of creation from Zebub to bring to life entire races of evil creatures: hordes who could then plague your earth, kill all other life on this planet, and thus ultimately destroy the hated goodness of The Great Deceiver. (At least that’s the plan I led him to believe).
[As an interesting side note, you might say that because Evil gave Death this power to create Life, it’s one reason why I took the cognomen “Nektar” — for I held within me the very <Essence of Ze> and it was this divine nectar which I used in all of my creationary experiments. And with that another mystery is solved].
Yet before I could create anything new or even seek out a fresh soul to ingest to pick up my spirits, just then an unwelcome memory attacked me – one that pummel me so viciously, I was forced to my knees!
“Dagaal!” I cowered before the apparition. “Nooooo!” My decrepit hand swiping the shadows, even as I turned away from the sight of…The Bone Dagger!
In a flash, the vision was gone — yet the torment remained.
Reeling in agony, I fell back upon the hard floor, as if suffering under a crushing weight.
Too afraid to move, my eyes cast about the cavern, wondering when the next attack would come…
Some time later – who can say how long? – I recovered from my nightmare, and as I leaned against the cold stones of the passageway, I thought not of my craving for new souls, but instead forced myself to remember that which I most wished to forget – my recent visit to Illusia.
I had not enjoyed my master’s hospitality, but the visit was one of necessity – I had visited Illusia countless times before and (as far as I knew) would need to return back there countless times again. For just like the other immortals, although I was ‘a god’ on Terra, I was nonetheless still bound by the laws of your universe: despite our seemingly divine powers, my colleagues and I were flawed — we could only remain for finite periods in a dimension that was separated from one of the Creator Gods A’H and Ze.
For we were deities created by higher powers and as such had to return sooner or later to the presence of one of The Supreme Beings… lest we run the risk of slowly fading away into nothingness. Since I believed that A’H wanted nothing to do with a fallen lumenarc like myself, and since Ze turned itself into Zebub when it became the <essence> of the Underworld (and thus became unapproachable by me directly), my only option was to beg Zebub’s son Lucifer for help — and that meant I had to return to Illusia.
Now even though I had long since earned my stripes in the pantheon of Dark Side gods, the King of Illusia seemed to have little appetite for remembering my heroic deeds of the past, and therefore he made me suffer like any other common lumenarc every time I needed more life force — for in both the mortal and the immortal world, nothing comes without a price.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 