Book I: The Search for Dagaal
Chapter 3: Creation’s Cliff Notes
If you’re read The Hidden Histories, then you’ll already know everything in this chapter, but for those who didn’t read the prequel or who may want a refresher on my exploits…
First off, you’ll recall that Illusia is a plane of existence vast beyond comprehension, larger than both of its older sister dimensions – The Universe of the Middle Plane and Illyria of the heavens. And whereas Illyria is tiny and sublime, and while your universe is wild, natural and untamed, even together those planes of existence do not compare to the near infinite monstrosity that is Illusia.
Remember, the netherworld was created eons ago by Zebub and the fallen lumenarc once known as Lucifer. It was Zebub who inspired Lucifer to incite a rebellion against A’H.
Being a fool back then, I was among the rebels. We lost and Michael The Mighty cast us out of Illyria and locked us fallen angels inside the Middle Plane which was a cosmic soup of matter and energy surrounded by a frustrating thing called The Firmament – which was a barrier we could not escape through. Also trapped with us were countless scores of Stellarone souls – whilst most of my peers paid no mind to them, I quickly scooped them up and put them in a secret multi-dimension prison of my own design – for I knew they’d be valuable assets later.
Realizing they’d been trapped, Zebub raged, and Lucifer wallowed, but I saw more opportunity. I encouraged Zebub and Lucifer to create a flat ‘plane-t’ called Terra which we could use to conduct experiments on. We sacrificed the fallen angel Gaia as part of the experiment (marrying her essence with this new earth) in order to create ‘Life’ and over the course of a ‘divine’ seven days (which is a time period far beyond your understanding) we filled that planet with life.
As I wrote about in The Hidden Histories, I had a part in all these experiments and it was because of my efforts that Terra saw the dawn of Man – as well as the creation of many other races of intelligent beings – most of which PRECEDED humanity.
Meanwhile however, Zebub could never get over the feeling that Its rival A’H’s fingerprints were evident throughout The Middle dimension – this made the Great Spirit vulnerable to my suggestion that It and Lucifer create an entirely new dimension. My masters took the bait and thus the netherworld was born.
Zebub and Lucifer filled their underworld with all of the best facets that they remembered from the other dimensions. But in spite of their efforts, there was a problem — Illusia was itself but an illusion — an almost perfect work of art, masterful in appearance yet lacking that most important of qualities to make it real: life itself. Thus, the trees, the mountains, the seas, and even the individual blades of grass were naught but images…images without a soul. And worse still was the fact that everything, everything was warped out of its natural proportion, all overbearingly too large; so incredibly huge that what might have been considered heavenly beautiful on a smaller scale, was instead grotesque in its freakishness.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, in the process of creating Its masterpiece, Zebub allowed Lucifer to foolishly use too much of It’s evil entire essence in creating Illusia – as a result, the Supreme Being once originally known as Ze became trapped in the hellish world It had created: Illusia thus became a prison world for its creator!
Left in charge of the underworld, Zebub’s son Lucifer installed himself as king, wielding <The Power of Ze> against any who opposed him — much to the chagrin of my colleagues and I. Thankfully I was able to use all these happenings to my advantage. Thus is was that I convinced Lucifer to allow my fellow lumenarcs and I to return to The Middle Plane in order to work on freeing Zebub from his bonds – theorizing that if we could break The Firmament, we could also open the divine doorways of Illusia and Illyria. The fool bought in to my plan and let me and some other fallen angels return to a dimension that was essentially a wild west of lawlessness.
Now initially, you’ll remember that Lucifer was not trapped in Illusia like his father – as a result, he often visited your universe to check on the progress my colleagues and I were making. While there, Lucifer took advantage of the fact that there was no other Supreme Being who appeared to be overseeing operations, therefore he assumed that role — basking in the glory of being an Almighty One and assuming more cognomens than I could count.
When he visited your world, Lucifer demanded we call him “El” and he proclaimed himself to be The Supreme Being. Naturally I used El’s ego to my advantage. As I told you about in The Hidden Histories, Lucifer and I fashioned the first man and woman of humanity, yet this couple was NOT “Adam and Eve” but instead “Adam and Lilith.”
The plan was for them to breed and create an intelligent race we could use as our pawns in destroying the great game of the gods. Frustratingly that plan failed – for Lilith refused to breed with Adam. In the years that followed I moved to a backup plan, conducting numerous experiments, still hoping to create a master race that I could control by forcing my captures stellarone souls into . I bred Adam with Apes – creating the slavish Hyperboreans. Then forced Lilith to breed with the lumenarc Pan – creating the Children of Mu, a race of intelligent sprites. Then Adam and the lumenarc Alyssa mated- producing the forest dwelling Amorosi and masters of the sea Atlanteans. Yet every one of these ‘root races’ failed me – for none of them allowed me to put one of my captured souls into them.
I then experimented with warping the various root races to create new species of evil beings – these became the trolls, giants, sea monsters, zombies and more of mythology. They wrecked such havoc on your planet, that the Children of Mu used their own magical powers to create a massive wall of Ice around their home continent of Lemuria in order to protect themselves.
The Amorosi and Atlanteans had a brief period where they became masters of the planet, but my creatures eventually devastated them too – after the sea people saw their beloved city state of Atlantis destroyed by one of my Leviathans, they enlisted the help of the Mu Men to build a second interior ice wall which the retreated behind – leaving most of the peoples of Terra to reside the middle section of the flat plane that was earth – with the magnetic ‘north pole’ where Gaia’s prison was to mark the center.
All this was rather interesting but in truth none of it did much to help me achieve my true goal – turning myself into THE God, so I went back to the drawing board. In fact, I turned back to Lucifer for help.
Together we tried again with humanity – this time creating Eve from Adam’s rib. Yet before Adam and Eve could mate, the woman Lilith appeared on the scene – jealous that Eve dared to take her place. As I wrote about before, I banished Lilith beyond the farthest Ice Wall – locking her in a secret prison beneath the Crystal Towers of Lemuria and then sealing off the ice wall with the magic from The Amulet of Zyphor – essentially locking the Children of Mu in the prison of their own design (only a few had remained in the world at large – little imps who called themselves Mylars).
As for Adam and Eve, Lucifer and I gave them a place to live – a magical garden called Eden – that sheltered them from all the other peoples of the world. Wanting to make doubly sure I’d gain control of Eve’s children when they eventually came, I tried to secretly influence her while she lived in The Garden – culminating in my influence of her to take a bite of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Eve persuaded Adam to do the same ‘sin’ and when he found out about it, El banished them from Eden!
Although El commanded me to destroy the garden, I secretly hid that section of Terra in a world between the worlds whilst ‘God’ was busy punishing Adam and Eve. Then I incited Lucifer’s lust such that he abused the woman Eve – impregnating her in the process. Yet that’s when El’s crimes caught up with him and he discovered to his horror that he was NOT the supreme power of The Middle Plane — for that’s when Michael The Mighty made an appearance again, and wielding <The Power of A’H> Michael cast El into the underworld of Illusia, locking him there with his father.
[Thankfully Michael overlooked any part I may have had in Lucifer’s despicable actions!]
Left unfettered, I then advanced my plans for Terra rapidly – inspiring the children of the original men to populate the planet, creating a few new altar-ego deities myself (including such favorites as Yahway and Baal) to string mankind along with empty promises, and pretty much setting myself up for success.
But alas for me, there was always a problem – I could only survive on Terra for a limited time before I needed more <hellfire>.
As you can imagine, when I next returned to Illusia, Lucifer wanted to make me pay for my little stunt with Eve and would have destroyed me had I not anticipated his plans and surprised him with a couple gifts that turned him back in my favor. That’s when I gave him a group of lesser demons that I called ‘baals’ – tiny, but nasty, little sprites who fawned over Lucifer, stroking his ego.
So enamored was the Dark Lord by my gift that Lucifer changed his name yet again to mark the occasion – taking on the cognomen Baal-Zebub.
To make doubly certain I would survive, I’d also released Lilith from her prison beneath Lemuria and brought her with me to Illusia – for I knew Lucifer had always lusted for her. After messing with her anatomy I’d made is such that Lilith could breed with Lucifer to create more baals – thus making her the Mother of Demons. Lucifer was ecstatic and quickly took Lilith for his queen.
All of which made me a celebrity for a time in Illusia and more importantly leaving me to live another day.
It’s true that old “BZ” (as I liked to call him) still didn’t completely trust me, and so eventually he started sending more of my colleagues from Illusia specifically to Terra – thinking he was doing me a favor because I was making so much progress on my own. And that’s when all hell (almost) broke loose – little did anyone know that the fallen lumenarcs Baal-Zebub sent this time (Rhokki, Pan, Alyssa, and Oceanus) all secretly hated him, so as soon as they got free of Illusia, they all rebelled – their efforts triggering heavenly visits from the archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael – all of which caused ME problems!
Now I sure as hell didn’t want to be held responsible for all this since all these treason-mongers were now on my pet planet – but naturally I got blamed for it all and when BZ fished me back to Illusia to account for myself, it was everything I could do to keep my head. With Lilith enjoying my plight, I had to beg for my master to give me one more chance to make things right by convincing him to send two of his most trusted lumenarcs to Terra to partner (read: spy) on me. These were Inanna and Samyaza, the ‘gods’ of lust and war respectively. Ostensibly these paragons of evil were sent to Terra to help me re-balance the scales in our favor, but in reality they caused more trouble than they were worth – as you’ll soon learn in THIS book.
So there you have it. You’re now up to speed with the past and we can get back to our story.
It’s true what they say – a god’s work is never done. It seemed mine was still only just beginning…
The Apocrypha of Azazel 