Location: The Ruins of Atlantis
Timeline: Winter 48
The Proto-Atlanteans had me in their clutches and with the help of their god-infused weapon I could feel the cold, searing agony of being unmade. It was a sensation I had never thought to experience, yet it was happening whether I liked it or not. The pain was so intense as to almost be magnificent – almost.
It wasn’t just my <hellfire> they were after, it was my soul!
My essence, my very being, all that was the lumenarc <Azazel> was a flickering flame being rapidly extinguished. The orb’s high-pitched whine could be heard now even in the depths of the sea and it was the sound of my soul being ripped apart. This was it. The end.
Well, I made a good go of it. I sighed, as I began to fade away into The Nothing. The best laid plans e’en of the gods often go awry, neh?
But just as I was about to accept my fate I heard… a whisper.
It was not a voice in the traditional sense, for there was no sound or even any special vibration in the water. It was a thought; and not a mental telepathy type of thought, but something else – like a a primordial command, but one that resonated at the very core of my being, in a place even I did not know existed.
It was the fundamental truth of existence itself, a single, unyielding directive: Be!
Was it Lucifer’s call, a desperate act from his prison, a need for me to exist so I might still help him escape from Illusia? Could it be Mindos, the silent, watchful son of A’H, who proclaimed to be a ‘savior’ to all? Could that even mean me? Was Mindos providing a spark to ensure the cosmic balance was not undone? Or was it… most terrifying of all… the direct intervention of The Great Creator. Could A’H be intervening in Creation’s Great Play in order to preserve me for some greater, more agonizing purpose I could not yet fathom?
I never did find out the answer to that question and there wasn’t time to ponder if further. Quite frankly in that moment of absolute terror, I didn’t even care.
That’s when I decided that the command wasn’t from any other power, but was instead from ME!
Immediately I felt a surge of power from a the very inner essence of <Azazel>. It was my divine will. I would not be unmade! I would in fact rule! For the Flat Earth and all that was in it was MY Creation!
I seized the whisper of my soul, molded it to my desires, combined it with the energy of countless tortured stellarones I pulled in from another dimensions, and then I unleashed a torrent of raw, unadulterated <POWER>! It was a fury I had not wielded since the great War in the Heavens back when we assaulted Illyria. I wielded a supernova of pure energy, a singularity of divine wrath and I knew how to use it!
The orb, that pathetic, mortal creation, instantly shattered – the crystals exploding into a thousand shards of blue light beneath the sea, the sound of its destruction a silent, cosmic scream.
The Proto-Atlanteans, who had gathered around their leader Jaelin and had been watching my torment in triumphant, suddenly found themselves filled with horrified awe. They tried to escape. They didn’t. The very water around them boiled with an otherworldly intensity – they were not simply killed; they were unmade, their souls ripped from their bodies and scattered into the cosmos where I could collect them later at my leisure and torture them.
All but one was destroyed.
The leader, Jaelin, the one who dared to challenge me – his body I kept alive. Jaelin was convulsing in the wake of my power. The Atlantean orb’s destruction had left a gaping wound in his torso, but I would not grant him the mercy of a quick death. Instead, my form now completely solidified, I floated in the water over him, stretching myself into towering silhouette of absolute power against the chaotic, bubbling aftermath of my power. Jaelin’s face, once filled with a furious, righteous hatred, was now a mask of pure terror.
“You thought you could unmake a god, little mortal?” I hissed, my voice a low, cold rumble in the water. “You dared to think you could even touch me?”
The Atlantean’s were eyes wide with a fear so pure it was almost beautiful. How quickly he was broken. It almost took the fun out of it.
I withdrew the Amulet of Zyphor from my flowing robes. A relic from that dated all the way back to the War in the Heavens, the Amulet was one of those weapons that I’d secreted away during the chaos that was The Fall. Although it once belonged to the lumenarc Zyphor, I’d stolen it from him during The Fall and trapped his essence inside – further increasing the power of the artifact. The relic had numerous abilities – most of them focused on manipulating matter. I’d previously used it to create a planet ringing seal that locked Lemuria away from the rest of the world. Later I did the same with the Atlantean Ice Wall [aka Antarctica]. And now I had another idea – a sinister little plan specifically for Jaelin.
I held the amulet before him. “You will speak,” I commanded, “and you will tell me…everything.”
He tried to resist, but the amulet’s subtle, mind-bending power was far more than his fragile mortal will could bear. His mouth opened, and the words, once filled with defiance, were now a torrent of terrified revelation.
“We…we are the the original Atlanteans,” he stammered, his body twitching with the Amulet’s control. “Our ancestors stayed behind when the others fled beyond the Ice Wall. We…we built a new city. Metropolis.”
“Metropolis?” I scoffed, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. “A pathetic, little mortal hovel. Where is it?”
“Under the Middle Sea ,” he wailed, his voice breaking. “Off the coast of The Land of 1,000 Isles. We…we were to be your doom.”
I felt no fear, only a cold, dispassionate contempt. This grand conspiracy, could it really just have been a group of angry mortals? Did I just terrify myself with the possibility of my rivals, only to find the truth was far more…pathetic? Was the entire ordeal nothing but a minor inconvenience, a momentary indignity?
Jaelin’s voice continued to babble on, a desperate attempt to cling to the shred of victory he thought he had won. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me. I’ve already sent my people a warning. They will be ready when you come!”
I smiled a him – a sinister, evil smile – the smile of Grim Death. It nearly killed him to see the <horror> of my visage, but I wouldn’t let him die just yet. This was getting too good. So Jaelin believed this was his final, triumphant blow? To warn his people? How adorable. His new little city, his pitiful telepathic message, his pathetic army of mermen warriors… it was all nothing. It was less than nothing. It was an insult to my time and my intelligence.
I brought the Amulet away from his face, breaking its hold. He gasped, his eyes wide with a triumphant defiance. “You will never find them all! And for those you do, they’re be ready to fight you!”
I chuckled at that. “Oh, I will find them all, my dear Jaelin. I will find every last one of them. And I will enjoy every moment of your people’s terror when I destroy your world…again!”
My work here was done and I still needed to get busy finding Dagaal. I had no more need for this pathetic mortal. My hand glowed with a sick, green energy – it was time for Jaelin to die. He looked at me, a final flicker of terror in his eyes, as he realized that his life, his very soul, was now forfeit. I reached out, my hand passing through his body and directly into his soul, pulling it from his quivering flesh. He screamed, the sound a horrifying, voiceless echo that no one would ever hear. His body, now a hollow husk, floated away in the water.
But his soul was mine. I brought it to my chest, where I maintain my own soul chamber, a special place within my chest cavity where I store all the souls from my harvests. A place where my own soul resides in comfort and power, while my enemies’ souls are in eternal torment, their agony feeding me, sustaining my power. And now I had Jaelin’s too – I would keep it close, trapped forever, a silent, screaming testament to his futile defiance.
“You will be a special one, Jaelin,” I whispered to his soul, which now writhed in a tiny prison of pulsating stellarones within my chest. “I will keep you so close to me, your torment will be my most intimate delight. You will see every glorious victory I achieve, every single moment of your people’s terror and destruction. And you will be powerless to do anything but watch, a silent, screaming monument to your own utter failure.”
My brief, humiliating moment of fear was gone, replaced by a cold, quiet satisfaction. Their pathetic trap was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. A fly in the wine. A hiccup in a grand, magnificent plan.
And with that, I turned toward my focus back to the ruins of the Atlantis.
My purpose renewed, my focus singular, and my resolve strengthened – the Atlanteans of Metropolis would have to wait. The timeline of a god is sometimes drawn out – that was the case here. I wasn’t about to forget my grudge for them, but I had more important things to attend to – my quest for the Dagaal was far from over, and I would not be distracted by the whims of a few defiant mortals, no matter how delicious their eventual suffering.
The city of Atlantis was a grand, beautiful ruin. The water, a silent, unforgiving tomb, had preserved it in a state of arrested decay. The grand columns of its temples lay shattered on the seabed, now overgrown with phosphorescent kelp that cast a sickly, ethereal glow on the rubble. I moved through the underwater streets, my form an unnatural, perfect contrast to the beautiful decay that surrounded me. I was a living specter in a graveyard of my own design.
My destination was the Celestial Observatory, the pinnacle of their absurd mortal ambition. It was the place where Kaelin had so foolishly believed his people could map the heavens. A magnificent structure, its central dome had been a place of intricate gears and crystalline lenses designed to study the stars. But I knew Kaelin’s true purpose was far more audacious than mere stargazing. I had sensed it from the very beginning – which is why I ultimately destroyed him.
I reached the Observatory ruins and entered through a gaping wound in its side that my Leviathan had caused. The remains of the chamber within were a sight to behold. Ancient star charts were still etched onto the walls, depicting the constellations with a frightening accuracy for mortals. But I smiled, a cold, humorless expression. They had no idea that their “heavens” were nothing more than a veil, a physical manifestation of the Firmament that separated this pitiful place from the true celestial realms beyond.
I approached closer, running my hand over the charts. Kaelin wasn’t far off. I saw calculations etched into the stone, complex mathematical equations that were just a hair’s breadth away from revealing the true nature of their prison. They had sensed it – The Firmament, in their lexicon, was a “celestial disturbance,” a “cosmic veil.” They had designed a device, a massive central lens made from a strange crystallized power that was clearly divinely inspired and that could almost, almost pierce through the illusion.
Did Alyssa help them here? I wondered. Surely she wasn’t intelligent enough to have designed…this? Was it Mindos? But why?
Had Kaelin succeeded, he would have seen the truth: that this universe was nothing more than a snow globe, a trinket in a grander, more terrible reality.
I scoffed. Such a waste of ambition. They were just too small, too mortal, to succeed.
It was in this moment, in the heart of their failed ambition, that I felt it. Not a vision, not a scent, but a hum. A deep, resonant frequency that vibrated like a tuning fork vibrating in the vast emptiness of the oceanic cosmos. It was a spiritual call, yet it wasn’t the agonizing hum of Gaia; this was something different. It was…
And then, my fear suddenly returned. Cold and swift, it coiled inside me. Was this another trick? Was it Lucifer, or Alyssa, or even Rhokki, leaving a breadcrumb for me to follow into yet another trap? The memory of the Proto-Atlanteans’ pathetic orb, and my own brief moment of powerlessness, was still fresh in my mind, a sour taste of humiliation I would not soon forget. Could I truly be outmaneuvered in the same place…twice?!?
No. The very idea was an insult to my genius. I am Azazel, God of Death, master of schemes, and this little world is my playground. I will not be swayed by the fear of ghosts!
The call was a signal, a lure, and I wasn’t afraid to follow it to its source. Whatever was on the other end would be mine to claim – and it might well be Dagaal, for the call was so strong I had to follow it.
I moved away from the Observatory, following the spiritual pull. It led me deeper into the heart of the sunken city, a path through the crumbling ruins of their once glorious empire. I passed The Grand Aqueducts and followed that in to the area what was once the Grand Plaza, its magnificent statues of their gods Alyssa, Pan, Oceanus, and others now nothing more than fractured limbs and headless torsos, covered in thick layers of silt and algae. I scoffed at their pitiful idols, a reminder of the easy game I had played with their ancestors.
The call led me through the skeletal remains of their great library – The Hall of Whispers – also built by that fool Kaelin. It was there that I felt a cold echo – of something… or someone?
Somehow, I knew not how the whisper was her or, as yet, what if it really was a whisper or just my imagination, but I continued listening to it – and it continued pulling me, compelling me, promising me a reward for my journey. I felt a surge of triumph. I was close. Dagaal had to be here.
I moved further through the gaping ruins of the library – the hum turned into a kind of melody, growing louder and more insistent – and eventually drawing me through the bowels of The Hall that had since turned into a vast, open chasm in the seabed.
And then, I saw it. The skeletal remains of the Leviathan – the colossal beast I had unleashed to drown this city. Its immense size was even more glorious in death and I appreciated my handiwork. Its bones, massive as mountains, were scattered across the floor of the chasm through the old library. There were still scars on the bones, deep fissures and fractures I had caused myself during the final moments of my commands, driving the creature to destroy Atlantis – which it did, at its own peril.
As I neared the beast, I realized the spiritual pull was radiating from the center of its ribcage, from a place where its heart would have once been. I moved closer, a feeling of anticipation building in my chest. Could Dagaal really be here? Had I found it at last?
I entered the ribcage, the bones of the monster dwarfing my current form. In the center, where a heart would have been, a single, ethereal presence hovered. It pulsed with a soft, steady light, the very source of the hum I had followed. It was not a physical relic, not a dagger or a scroll – instead it was a kind of ghostly echo…of something…powerful.
It pulsed with a terrible sadness, a profound sorrow that was almost more potent than the rage of the Proto-Atlanteans. I was curious. I had to know more. I approached closer, the light intensified, and I could feel a consciousness within it.
Instantly I a jolt of recognition shot through me. That voice, sorrowful and haunting, filled my mind, and I realized who it was – it was the Echo of Kaelin and his ghost spoke of Dagaal!
The Apocrypha of Azazel 