Location: The Lands Beyond the Second Ice Wall
Timeline: Sixth Age, Spring 51
As I dragged my wretched form over the final edge of the violet-gold crystal of the monstrous Ice Wall that guarded Lemuria, the screaming winds that ever howled during my journey through New Atlantis suddenly stopped. In its place was a silence so absolute it felt like a physical weight pressing against my eardrums. It was overwhelming. I gave in to the pain and collapsed.
I lay there at the top of the gateway to Lemuria for what felt like an eternity, breathing in the thin, ozone-heavy air. As I regained my pysche I realized I was waiting for the warmth that I knew should have been there. Where is the Black Sun of Lemuria to greet me? I wondered. Won’t the lush green of these hidden lands soothe my broken form?
Yet when opened my eyes and sat up there was no green, there was no gold. I couldn’t even see Lemuria or much of anything for that matter.
Instated stretching out before me was a vast, silent sea of…Harmonic Fog. A thick, white mist that swallowed all sound and light, swirling in patterns that defied the wind. Somewhere deep within that soup, the Crystal Towers of Mu waited. Somewhere in there, I knew Lilith’s ‘children’ had a trap for me.
I looked back at the wastes controlled by New Atlantis that I had so painstakingly crossed these past few months, then I turned forward and gazed into the white nothingness again.
“Well,” I whispered, a manic, broken laugh bubbling up in my chest. “At least the view is better here.”
The summit of the Lemurian Barrier was not a peak, but a plateau of white nothingness. It was not a mist of water and air. It was a suspension of crystalline light, a swirling tide of iridescent vapors that moved with a rhythmic, pulsing intelligence. It was, of course, the Mylars’ illusory barrier – to the “pure,” it was surely a refreshing bath of resonance to welcome them; to me, a being of jagged edges and stolen fire, it was like a psychic acid.
Yet with my hellfire still running on empty, I had no choice – I stepped forward along the summit’s plateau and prepared to enter The Lands Beyond.
Immediately, the world vanished. I couldn’t see my bony feet beneath my tattered robes. I couldn’t hear the sound of my own ragged breathing. The flicker of my existence grew frantic, my ghastly body flashing between a solid wretch and a gray shadow.
“The silence is loud, isn’t it, Azazel?”
The unexpected voice didn’t come from the air. It came as if from my own shadow, which was now etched onto the white mist in a sickening, glowing gold. I recognized the voice from the Atlantean Sentinel – the one I had torn apart in the cave.
“You’re dead,” I croaked. The sound of my own voice was swallowed by the fog the moment it left my lips. “I consumed you.”
“You swallowed a spark,” the voice whispered, echoing inside my skull. “But Vril cannot be digested by a being full of rot. I am now a note in your discord, Shadow-King. And the fog of our Mylar brethren… it will be a mirror for you.”
“You dare to play games with a god?” I was annoyed, yet the mist began to shift and I couldn’t help but be curious as to what I’d see.
This mirror didn’t show me a I was now, or as I would be; instead it reconstructed the past.
The white vapor turned a deep, bruised crimson. I wasn’t on the Ice Wall anymore. I was standing on the marble balcony of the Celestial Observatory during the First Fall of Atlantis. The famous observatory was built by the infamous Kaelin back during the time of the Hidden Histories. Yes, that Kaelin – the one who took down my Leviathan during the original Fall of Atlantis and whose ghost most recently used my creature’s skeletal remains against me during my battle in the sunken ruins.
Before it was destroyed during Atlantis’ glorious fall, the Celestial Observatory was a testament to the Atlantean’s deep connection with the cosmos – as taught to them by the Mylars. Inside, a vast dome housed a collection of enchanted lenses and mirrors that allowed their people’s scholars to gaze beyond The Firmament and into the heavens with unparalleled clarity. The observatory was not only a center for astronomical research but also a sacred space where the Atlanteans could commune with the stars and seek guidance from the constellations.
But no observing or communing was going on while I looked – for the sky was raining fire, and the screams of a dying civilization rose up like a choir of the damned.
As if from afar, I saw an earlier version of myself—tall, ghastly, and terrible in my radiance—watching the destruction with a look of amusement and curiosity – assured that my Leviathan would destroy Kaelin and his people.
“Look closer,” the Sentinel urged.
The foggy vision left the mountain-high observatory and refocused on on a specific street at sea level in the city proper. An Altantean girl, no older than seven or eight, was clinging to a piece of floating debris in the rising floodwaters that were quickly covering the city as a result of the surge caused by the coming of my creature. The drowning girl looked up at the balcony, her eyes wide with a desperate, pathetic hope. She saw…me – and reached out a hand, screaming for help.
I remembered this girl. In my memory, I had simply smile and turned away. But the strange Mylar fog forced me to feel what I had suppressed: the precise moment I had used a microscopic thread of my power to push the debris the girl clung further into the current. I hadn’t just ignored her; I had ensured her end because I wanted to see how the light left a eye of the child when her hope was replaced by the realization of a god’s apathy.
But then came a twist – I felt the cold water in my own lungs. I felt the child’s terror vibrating in my Vril-infected veins.
“Stop it,” I hissed, clutching my head. “It was a necessity. A study in the transition of essence!”
“A study?” the Sentinel mocked. “You are a coward who plays with ants because you are afraid to look at the Sun.”
The vision shifted. Now, it was Illyria. I saw the minor spirits—the lesser lumenarcs who had followed Lucifer and Ze’s rebellion because we had promised them they would be kings of their own spheres. It was all a lie of course – we just needed them as pawns who could be sacrificed in the front lines of our battle against Michael The Mighty and A’H’s army. I watched that spiritual rabble being unmade by the Illuminated One’s wrath, their pathetic essences scattered into the Great Nothing while Lucifer, myself, and Ze’s more important minions slipped away to fight another day.
But then I saw their spiritual faces. Untold thousands of them. Each one was a mirror – reflecting my own hollow core, my own divine spark that I’d lost in Illyria.
The madness, fueled perhaps by those Aeon-Spores I’d ingested a bit too boldly, began to boil up within me. I felt like I wasn’t just seeing these things; that I was becoming them. My hands were no longer mine; they were the hands of flesh of that drowning Atlantean girl, then the hands of light of those dying lumenarcs.
“I am… AZAZEL!” I screamed in rebellion – but the silence of The Harmonic Fog ate the name.
The Vril-infection within me began to itch…violently. My bones felt like they were being scraped with a peeling wire . The fog was seemingly trying to “Harmonize” me—to smooth out the jagged, necrotic trauma of my soul until I was nothing more than a hum in the Mylar choir.
“Lilith is behind this!” I wailed, even as I began disappearing. Not into the void, but into the Light. And for a God of Death, there is no greater horror.
“Accept it,” the Sentinel whispered, his voice becoming more resonant, more beautiful. “Give up the Bone. Give up the grudge. Become part of the Song.”
“No,” I growled, now guessing that perhaps Alyssa was in on this trap – the Atlanteans were, after all, her people. But is Alyssa really partnering with Lilith? They hate each other. Right?
Desperate and confused, I got an idea – certain that my intelligence was still astute enough to save me. Reaching into my robes and pulled out the Shard of Varysha. It was pulsing with a sickly, dying violet light, reacting to the overwhelming “Purity” of The Fog.
I didn’t use The Shard to cut a doorway or find me a path to escape, instead I used it as a kind of lightning rod. I gathered nearly every ounce of my dwindling hellfire, every drop of the “dirty” energy from the Aeon-spores, and the jagged, stolen Vril from the Sentinel. I compressed it all into the Shard until it began to vibrate with a frequency that felt, well kind of like a toothache in my soul.
“If you want a song,” I snarled, my eyes glowing with a frantic, animalistic heat, “then listen to this!”
I slammed my fist into the air, releasing the energy through the Shard.
It wasn’t a blast of fire. It was a Discordant Scream!
The sound that came from The Shard was a jagged, glass-shattering shriek that tore through the silence of The Fog like a razor through silk. It was the sound of a billion agonies, the sound of a god’s pride breaking against the firmament.
Best of all The Harmonic Fog shattered!
For hundreds of yards in every direction on the Lemurian side, the iridescent vapors crystallized and fell to the ground as shimmering dust. The silence was replaced by a ringing, metallic echo. My visions vanished. The Sentinel’s voice was gone – drowned out by the sheer volume of my own defiance.
I stood there, gasping, my skull bleeding a thin trickle of black ichor – but then I saw it: below lay Lemuria.
Even though I’d been here before [when I’d trapped Lilith in the Crystal Towers], the sight still amazed me – for Lemuria was a land of impossible, glowing beauty. Although the original Atlantis (before it was destroyed) and the New Atlantis were both a testament to a people whose civilization was far advanced beyond the other mortal peoples of the world at that time, the land of the Mylars was literally light years ahead of any technology of any mortal civilization that had ever roamed the flat earth – and that was before they’d moved beyond the Ice Walls. What I viewed now, was nearly beyond words – a grand civilization so far advanced as to seem nigh impossible!
Under the invisible warmth of the Black Sun and the silver lens of the Lunar Mirror, the islands of Lemuria shimmered in shades of amethyst, gold, and emerald. Those floating lands moved lazily through the seas, anchored together by beams of light. The Crystal Towers of the capital rose far away in the distance, looking like a dream built by those who had never known a nightmare.
But I knew that beauty was a threat to me.
And that wasn’t the worst of it – quickly moving towards me was a needle-like craft seemingly made of translucent quartz – its underside humming with a pale violet light. It was technology never before seen in your world – not then, not now. Even from afar I could spy the creatures inside the translucent ship – they were slender and draped in robes of woven light that defied the shadows. They were of course Mylars and their faces were a mask of perfect, terrifying… tranquility.
Apparently my “Discordant Scream” had been a flare in the dark and now my enemies were coming for me. Soon other ships appeared – quickly covering the distance between us.
I had survived the mist. I had survived the memories. But as these mylar ships began to glide toward me, I realized I had just signaled the entire continent that the Shadow-King had arrived.
And I still didn’t have any magic to fight with.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 