I was The Dark Sun – The God – of The Dregs. And I basked in the glory of it all. These pathetic creatures showed me kindness that I had perhaps never experienced in the entire existence of my long life.
True, I had been ready to snap their necks and feed upon their essence, but the more I remained with these lowly peasants a new, more elegant design began to weave itself in my mind. Dead Dregs were merely calories. Living Dregs… well, they might be… ammunition. Yes, I could have murdered them all then and there, and yes I’d have more energy as a result, however I’d also have to walk the entire way to the Crystal Towers alone, likely dodging Mylar patrols and enduring more hardships. That didn’t sound like so much fun.
But what if I anointed these Dregs? If I turned this pathetic cult into a localized apocalypse? Well now, that might be an idea worth exploring!
The following morning (if you could call it that in this land of eternal sunshine), my throne room of junk felt charged with an electric tension. I sat upon my pile of padded refuse, my skeletal frame still processing the “Grease-Trap Honeycomb” from yesterday and every time my physical form breathed, a faint, iridescent vapor curled out from my nostrils.
I gestured for the council to approach. Krr’ka and five other elders crept forward, their bellies low to the iridescent mud as I said, “You have lived on the leavings of the Sky-Walkers for too long.” Then, standing up and my shadow elongating like a reaching claw, I hoisted Krr’ka up by his matted scruff.
The old Dreg’s feet dangled above the ground and he shook so violently I could hear his teeth clicking, while the other five elders flattened themselves against the earth, whimpering in a rhythmic, terrified chant.
“You worship the stars they throw away,” I hissed, my face inches from Old Moss-Back’s. “But I tell you, the stars are meant to be caught. They are meant to be eaten. Watch.”
I closed my eyes and reached into the hollow of my chest, dragging a thread of the stolen Mylar essence—that pure, silver-white light—into the palm of my hand. For a second, it hummed with celestial peace. Then, I crushed it. I infused it with a drop of my own necrotic bile, twisting the silver into a jagged, violent purple. With a flick of my wrist, I then cast the corrupted light into Krr’ka’s chest.
The effect was horrific and beautiful. The Dreg chieftain didn’t just absorb the light; he caught fire from the inside out! The onlookers were terrified as Krr’ka let out a scream that started as a whine and ended as a lion’s roar. While the other Dregs wailed in fear, I watched with clinical fascination as Krr’ka’s body shriveled, matted muscles began to bulge and ripple, tearing through his thin skin. Soon the cataracts in his old eyes dissolved, replaced by a fierce, predatory violet glow that burned like twin nebulae. His spine straightened with a sound like snapping dry wood. But then the villages found themselves in awe when Krr’ka rose up – for they saw that their leader didn’t just look younger; he looked like a god of the soil reborn. Old Moss-Back was longer a scavenger, but a titan of the undergrowth!
Praise erupted all around me as I quickly worked the room like a dark gardener tending to his thorns. I flicked the violet spark at the other five elders who were beseeching me to ‘bless’ them with the same gift. One by one, they underwent that agonizing, glorious “evolution.”
By now a crowd of hundreds had gathered at the edge of the clearing, their wide eyes reflecting the violet storm. They began to wail and cheer, believing they were witnessing a miracle of healing.
“Fools,” I thought, my gaze lingering on Krr’ka’s trembling, over-muscled hands. “I am not fixing you. I am burning the wick at both ends.”
What they didn’t know was that by mixing my darkness with their stolen light, I had effectively “overclocked” their biology. I was giving them the arrogance of the Mylars—the absolute belief in their own powers—but wedding it to the feral, suppressed rage of a thousand years of hunger. These Dregs wouldn’t just fight for me; they would be a fever that the Mylar world couldn’t break. The result would serve my goals on multiple fronts.
The village in near ecstacy, I then leaned into Krr’ka’s ear, my breath cold against his newly-feverish skin.
“Your God requires a sacrifice,” I whispered, my voice a silken threat. “But today, I do not ask for your blood. I ask for that of your enemies. I will show you how to bleed the pipes of the Star Forts. I will show you how to turn their ‘Great Alignment’ into a Great Silence.”
Krr’ka turned to me. He didn’t bow this time. He looked me in the eye, his violet gaze burning with a madness I recognized all too well – it was the look of a creature that had finally found something worth killing for and which had the power to do it.
“We will drink the light, Lord,” he rasped, his voice now a deep, resonant rumble. “And we will leave the sky empty.”
I smiled. It was time to stop being a lazy king and start being a war general.
The Fire
Like any great military leader I knew my pawns would pay a heavy price – the Dregs would probably all die and their village would be destroyed. In my mind, it was a worthy sacrifice. They would almost certainly be annihilated by the Mylar High Archons and probably rather quickly, but that didn’t matter because I didn’t need them to engage in a protracted war, I just needed a distraction that would last long enough for me to reach the Crystal Towers. As for the Dregs they would die as my divine soldiers, not as the lowly scavengers they’d lived as for so long – so as you can see, I was giving my worshipers the greatest gift a god could bestow: A reason to burn.
By now the entire village had been transformed – even the children would serve as my killing force. All were ready to serve me as their Dark Sun.
“Rise, my Heavy Ones,” I commanded. “The Sun has set on the spires. It is time for the Shadow to rise.”
“How, Great Lord?” Krr’ka practically breathed fire in anticipation.
“You’ve spoken about Mu Men as beings who fly higher than your people could ever reach.” I scoffed. “You’ve lamented that The Sky Ones live in a realm beyond your reach, like a kite in the sky you called them. Yet kite can be brought down, Elder,” I whispered, the Shard in my chest pulsing a dark, sympathetic violet. “All it takes is someone with the strength to pull on the string. I will show you how.”
“Yes! Yes!” The community wailed in delight.
“The Mylar Elites look at you as a kind of a cosmic yardstick,” I chuckled. “How deliciously hypocritical of them. They’ve kept you alive as a reminder of what they’ve outrun. They virtue signal about their care and concern for you, yet they’ve done nothing to truly help your people and instead they’ve kept you here in these slums.”
“They’ve only ever given us the ‘Leavings,’” Krr’ka spat. “Just enough to keep our hearts beating, but never enough to stand straight.”
“Well,” I said, a slow, predatory grin spreading across my skull. “How would you like to stop eating the scraps and start eating the cooks? How would you like to see them all burn?”
Old Moss-Back’s eyes widened, the faint amber of now young eyes flaring. “We have no fire. Give us fire to burn them, Dark Lord!”
“You have no fire yet,” I whispered, reaching out a shadowy hand. “But I am The Fire of First Fall. And I have Fire to share.”
Krr’ka stared at my outstretched hand, which suddenly transformed into a limb made of solidified smoke and ancient embers. Even though he was a younger, stronger version of himself, he and his villagers were all still terrified at my powers. Yet beneath their terror was a starvation that went deeper — it was a starvation for revenge.
“The ‘Pure Ones’ gave you the Leavings to keep you weak,” I explained in a honey-laden voice. “I am your great God and it is I who will give you the Flame to make your people into A Fever. A Fever that will burn the ‘Great Alignment’ until it turns to ash.”
I pulled a small, flicking spark of Hellfire from my core—not enough to deplete me, but enough to act as a catalyst. I pressed it into the center of their scavenged village plaza, right into the mud where the leaking Vril-conduit usually pooled.
The reaction was instantaneous. The “Pure” Vril energy, usually stable and cold, met my “Discordant” fire. The pool didn’t just burn; it erupted into a violet, crackling plasma.The Dregs shrieked, falling back, but then they saw it: the heat was making the “Heavy” metal of their village glow. The discarded Mylar hull-plates weren’t just scraps anymore; they were becoming molten, malleable, and devilishly dangerous.
“Pick it up,” I commanded a scarred Dreg who was closest to one of the hot plates . “Touch the violet flame. It won’t harm you. It will empower you.”
The creature reached out, his coarse fur singeing. As his hand encountered the plasma that surrounded the metal, a violet light raced up his arm, tracing his veins like liquid lightning. He let out a roar—the thunderous war-cry of a predator.
The rest of the Dregs quickly jostled with one another as they all came together en-mass to get their own weapons. it was beautiful to behold these once poor peaceful villagers turn themselves into a new kind of killing machine.
The Blueprint of Chaos
My ‘over-clocked’ Dregs were full of blood lust and empowered with the fires of hell. It was now time to give them the plan and then unleash them to create chaos.
“Your village is built on the plumbing of their paradise.” I explained. “Every pipe, every ‘Resonance-Conduit’ that carries precious light to those far away Crystal Towers, passes right beneath YOUR feet. You’ve been sitting on the jugular of Sky Lords for centuries and never knew the power you had over them.”
I pointed toward a massive, silver-clad artery pipe that pulsed with a rhythmic, golden glow—one of the main power line for a Star Fort on the near horizon. “Let me show you what your power really is. Follow me!”
I led the pack to that Resonance-Conduit pipe. “The Mu Men tell you this energy is sacred,” I hissed, my hand glowing with a spark of stolen light. “They tell you that to touch it is to die. They lied!”
To the amazement of the villagers, I violently plunged my skeletal hand into the conduit, tearing open a jagged hole in the line. Immediately a fountain of golden Vril sprayed cascaded upwards and let it wash over my skeletal frame. At first the Dregs recoiled in terror, but when they saw that I not only didn’t die, but appeared to become even more powerful, they rejoiced.
“Tear the pipe open!” I commanded them, having transformed my appearance into the full manifestation of their Dark Sun God. “Let the Vril pour out. Let it mingle with the fire I’ve given you!”
The Dregs, ravenous for blood, quickly did as I commanded – ripping open the main lines and releasing more of the Mylar power source. Eager to empower themselves further, they practically bathed in the Vril sludge – their already engorged muscles now swelling further. In unison they began to roar – their booming voices shaking the glass ferns—a sound of pure, unadulterated rebellion.
“Now Go!” I commanded. “Feed. Break every pipe you can find. Tear every wire. Destroy the Star forts. Give The Sky Lords the silence they claim to love.”
Krr’ka raised a hand to hold his people back as he asked me, “What about you, Dark Lord? You go to the Towers?”
“I go to claim what is mine,” I replied. “And I suspect that by the time I reach the gates, the ‘High Archons’ will be much too busy dealing with the peasants in their slums to notice a shadow at their front door.”
Old Moss-Back bowed, not in worship this time, but in a grim, soldierly acknowledgment. “We will make the sky bleed gold, Oh Great Dark Sun.”
“Very well, my son,” I chuckled in delight and Krr’ka and his new army raced away from the village toward the edge of the forest where the sea of sapphire mercury waited. As they disappeared from view I added softly, “Try not to die too quickly. I’d hate to think my fire went to waste on a short show.”
The Great Blackout
What followed was a “Resonance Riot.” As the Dregs swarmed the conduits, the delicate harmonic balance of the islands began to fail. In the distance, the Star Fort I had recently sabotaged emitted a sickening whump of atmospheric pressure.
Then, it happened. For the first time in ten thousand years, the “Always-Day” of the Lemurian archipelago flickered. One of the Light-Bridges spanning the mercury seas began to dim. Then the nearest spires of the capital city went quiet. Given that the island of The Dregs was completely dark by now it was easy to see the source of this harmonic imbalance.
As expected, the Mylar Sky-Huntsmen began to appear on the scene – screaming overhead in their flying mechs, their light-weapons blazing as they hurried to suppress the “savages” I had unleashed.
“And there is the distraction I needed,” I whispered, quite satisfied with myself as I watched the golden smoke rise from the forest.
My people were surely dying awful deaths by now, but I didn’t let that trouble me. Instead I turned my gaze toward the Central Island of Lemuria. Without the Light-Bridge, the only way across the mercury sea was a series of floating “Stabilizer Platforms” that were now drifting aimlessly in the dark.
I began to run. My ashen feet crunched over the glass ferns, my black shadow stretching long and hungry across the landscape. By helping the Dregs find their teeth, I had ensured my own path was clear. They would be slaughtered, but they would die with fire in their bellies instead of hunger. It was a fair trade – at least in my opinion.
Quickly I reached the edge of the Glass Forest. Ahead lay the sapphire mercury sea, and beyond that, the Crystal Towers of Lemuria, now silhouetted against a sky that had finally known a moment of darkness. My prize awaited and this time I would not be denied!
The Apocrypha of Azazel 