I was a stowaway on the Mylar vessel, hoping I was heading to Lemuria, but still not quite sure.
It is a bitter irony, I mused, the vibration of the Star-Glass floor rattling my flattened essence. To think that while the rest of the mortals on the Flat Earth have only recently been celebrating the ‘invention’ of the wheel, my captors are navigating the heavens on a beam of solidified music
I watched the gold-liquid rings of the ship’s engine spin in their frictionless housing. This was not the clanking, steam-hissing machinery of a primitive mind. This was Trans-Dimensional Engineering. The Mylars had bypassed the need for fire and wheel eons ago. They didn’t burn fuel; they manipulated the local density of reality.
As a scientist I was fascinated by it all. I observed that The Lumina-7 moved by creating a “harmonic void” in front of the prow, effectively falling forward into a space that didn’t exist until the ship’s tone created it. It made the fastest chariot of the First World look like a slug crawling through tar. Even some of my lumenarcs friends – the so called ‘gods’ of the old pantheons, with their lightning bolts and flying carpets, were merely playing with static electricity compared to the sheer, clinical power of the Vril-grid.
My shadow-form rippled with envy I dared not name. Lilith’s children aren’t just living in the future; they are crafting it, with the arrogance of those who have never known the dark.
I felt the Shard in my chest thrum in agreement, but I also found a dark, twisted pleasure in the thought that all this crystalline complexity could still be brought down by a single, well-placed piece of my magic when once I got it back.
And onward we traveled.
The Tapestry of the Lands Beyond
The sensation of Vril-propulsion was not like the roar of a not-yet created jet or even the gallop of a horse; it was a high-frequency scream that existed just outside the range of hearing. To my two-dimensional shadow-self, flattened against the Star-Glass floor of the Lumina-7, the acceleration felt like being ironed into the very fabric of reality. I was a dark smudge, a stain of ancient malice, clinging to a vessel of “purity” as it streaked toward the heart of Lemuria.
Below the transparent hull, the archipelago of the Lands Beyond stretched out in a breathtaking, horrifying display of architectural arrogance. Lemuria sat far away at the center—a continent-sized emerald of light in the distance—but it was surrounded by a thousand lesser islands. Some were suspended by massive gravitic anchors, drifting slowly over a sea.
Eventually I saw the Vril-Gardens, where the flora did not grow wild, but in perfect Mandelbrot spirals. Every leaf was a precise fractal, shivering in the breeze not because of the weather, but because they were being “played” like harp strings by the atmosphere. Between the islands, I saw impossibly long Light-Bridges—solid beams of refracted gold—where smaller Mylar craft darted like minnows in a sunlit pond.
But it was the inhabitants—the descendants of Pan and Lilith—who intrigued me the most. I still couldn’t believe how far they’d evolved from the creatures whom Lilith first birthed. From my bird’s-eye view, this new Mylar society looked like a hive of translucent insects. They were everywhere, moving through the Resonance-Wells and plazas in rhythmic, choreographed lines.
On one island I saw groups of them gathered in the Geometric Plazas, their long, willow-thin arms raised in unison. That’s when I realized they were building something, only they weren’t building with tools.
By Baal, are they are SINGING that building into existence? I was amazed as I watched a spire of Star-Glass grow ten feet in a matter of seconds, formed entirely from the condensation of Vril-mist that appeared to be controlled by the surrounding Mylars.
Near one of the Resonance Wells, I made note of what appeared to be some kind of guardians. They wore robes of spun silver that trailed behind them like liquid smoke. They didn’t carry swords or bladed weapons but instead they held staves topped with what I took to be “Vibration-Cores.” Every so often, they would strike the ground, sending a visible ripple of golden energy through the soil which I could only presume was to “reset” the local resonance?
When we passed over a kind of village I noted how the children of this society were similar and yet different from other races. I observed a handful playing a kind of game I called “Light-Toss” where the ball was a sphere of contained plasma – yet these were unlike any other children on the plane-t – for these young ones moved with a eerie fluidity, as if they were made of silk and starlight rather than bone and blood. I must know more about their evolution, I vowed to capture some and bring that back to The Life Labs with me.
Further on, the landscape became more industrial, or perhaps a better word would be “Alchemical.” Larger Resonance-Wells appeared – these were massive obsidian-rimmed pits that dipped deep into the sea but didn’t just hold water; instead they appeared to hold what I could describe as the “breath” of the flat earth.
I wanted to learn more about this strange phenomena but the shipped passed on faster than I would have liked. Alas.
As we flew over them, a deep, sonorous thrum shook the Lumina-7 when one of the wells exhaled a plume of golden mist. I watched in fascination as the mist was then harvested by floating collector-discs and beamed back towards The Great Pyramid of Mu still far off in the distance.
And I call myself a god? I felt small in the presence of such advancements.
It was a paradise of absolute order, run by a race of creatures who seemed to be aloof to the toils and struggles of the rest of the mortals trapped within the Ice Walls on the inner flat earth.
“Look at them,” I hissed into the cold glass, my shadow-eyes flickering. “Living in a cage of their own light. They’ve forgotten the beauty of a storm. They’ve forgotten the smell of wet earth and the glory of life’s ups and downs. They must be destroyed – luckily I’m just the god for the job.”
Eventually the Lumina-7 banked sharply – heading toward a massive Star Fort that loomed on the horizon like a jagged diamond. The time for observation was over. The hunger in my core—the need for the very light they wasted so casually—was becoming a scream I could no longer ignore.
I’m starving! I groaned. Either I can kill these pilots or else… A new idea occurred to me as we passed over the first of the Star Forts. Similar to some of the structures the Mylars had left behind during their time when the once roamed the entire earth, the fort looked like others. But whereas those older versions that still remained on the inner flat earth were massive, multi-pointed star built white stone and gold filigree, I could see that these new version were built differently. Even from this height, the truth was undeniable: these new fort were a celestial circuit board. The points of the star were like massive tuning forks connected into the earth’s ley lines to stabilize the region’s resonance. These were the anchors of the Gilded Cage – similar to the Tartarian blueprints that would one day haunt the memories of lesser men like you. And I couldn’t help but wonder – had the Mylars gained the ability to tap into The Firmament, perhaps even to penetrate beyond that barrier? No, it cannot be!
The Lumina-7 docked briefly at the fort’s central spire. I knew my strength was failing; I could feel my shadow-edges fraying. I needed fuel!
I made the risky decision to exit my position. Still keeping my 2-D shape, I “slid” off the ship and into the fort’s ventilation—a network of tubes humming with pure ozone. This decision turned out perfectly for me because that when I saw a full squad of Mylars – they were standing in a circle, their eyes closed in a collective meditative trance to power the fort’s resonance and they were perfect for my… needs.
The Graying
Did I murder the Mylars? Yes.
But you may be interested to know that I did not use hellfire; I was too weak for such theatrics, and the smell of sulfur would have alerted the fort’s sensors before I could draw a single breath of their light. Instead, I simply… overlapped.
The Hall of Resonators within the Star Fort was a cathedral of absolute silence, save for the low, rhythmic thrumming of the great Star-Glass pillars that anchored the fort to the earth. The light here was a soft, pulsing violet, designed to keep the Mylars in a state of hyper-aware trance. There were six of them, arranged in a perfect hexagon, their long, alabaster fingers barely touching. They were beautiful in a way that made my ancient, jagged heart ache with hatred—their skin shimmering with a faint, internal aurora, their faces expressions of divine boredom.
I flowed across the floor like spilled ink, a two-dimensional predator moving through a three-dimensional dream. When my shadow touched the first Mu Man’s feet, the creature didn’t jump or scream. It couldn’t. Its nervous system was tuned to the high-frequency harmonics of the fort, and I was a burst of pure, necrotic static.
I reached up from the floor, my shadow-fingers elongating like claws, and touched their “radiance.”
It was like drinking liquid silver, cold and electric. The moment the connection was made, a sickening transformation began. The Mylar’s internal glow—the silver ichor that served as its blood—began to swirl violently, drawn toward the point of my contact. I felt the Shard of Varysha in my chest heat up, acting as a vacuum for their celestial energy.
I watched, mesmerized by my own cruelty, as their translucent skin lost its luster. It didn’t just turn pale; it turned a dull, leaden gray, becoming opaque and brittle like old parchment. The aurora behind their eyes flickered, stuttered, and finally died, leaving behind empty, stone-like sockets.
The “song” of the room changed. The harmonic hum of the pillars dipped into a minor key, then a dissonant screech as the Sentinels’ collective consciousness was severed. They were the bridge between the fort and the earth, and I was burning the bridge as I crossed it.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered into the freezing air as the last of the six began to fade. “You wanted to be pure. Now you are perfectly empty.”
I didn’t kill them in the way a beast kills; I simply siphoned their frequency until they were nothing but hollow, “grayed” husks—biological statues left standing in a frozen circle. I felt my shadow deepen, losing its transparency, turning from a faint smudge into a deep, abyssal black that seemed to suck the very light out of the room.
I was no longer a starving scavenger. I was a parasite gorged on the blood of stars. As I slid back toward the Lumina-7, I felt a surge of ancient, familiar malice. I was heavy. I was dark. And I was about to be the most expensive mistake the Mylar race ever made!
When we continued our journey, I noticed the change immediately. My newly fed essence began to vibrate with a frequency the ship couldn’t handle. The two Mylar pilots were communicating, their language a series of rapid-fire harmonic shifts and light-pulses.
Having ingested recent Mylar essence, I could finally translate:
“Primary Core destabilizing,” the pilot “sang” in a flurry of C-sharp tones. “The ‘Discordant Note’ has moved from the Barrier to the hull. A biological anomaly is interfering with the Star-Glass resonance.”
So they weren’t just patrolling when they first found me, I realized. They were transporting a Vril-Core—a condensed battery of pure Lemurian light—to the Central Vault of Mu. That was good because that’s exactly where I wanted to go. However my presence was acting like a handful of sand in a diamond engine – that might be a problem.
As if on cue, the ship began to shudder. The “pure” energy of the ship’s propulsion was trying to “correct” my shadow, and my shadow was fighting back. The engines emitted a screeching, metallic feedback loop that shattered the peach-colored peace of the cockpit. The Star-Glass beneath me began to crack, spider-webbing with violet light as the Shard of Varysha in my chest reacted to the ship’s failing harmonics.
The ship lost its lift and we began a long, graceful, and terrifying arc toward the Glass Forest below—a dense canopy of crystalline ferns that looked like frozen lightning.
“Serves them right,” I hissed, feeling my three-dimensional weight beginning to pull at my shadow-edges as the ship’s stability failed as I enjoyed the wild ride.
The Lumina-7 tilted violently. That’s when I decided I’d ridden with these nitwits long enough. I expended a bit of hellfire to quickly snuff out my captors, ingested their essence, and then jumped ship.
I felt my form “inflate” back to it’s normal form even as I plummeted through the air, the wind screaming through my bare ribs. Behind me, the ship crashed into the canopy with a sound like a thousand falling chandeliers.
I too crashed through the crystalline ferns, my skeletal frame slamming into the iridescent forest floor – thankfully my god-like aura protected my physical form – as I lay there, savoring my journey, the silence of the forest was interrupted by a low, guttural chattering.
Well, this should be interesting…
The Apocrypha of Azazel 