The crossing from the island of the Dregs to Lemuria was like a dance upon a shattered mirror. With this portion of the Mylar power grid screaming under the assault of my “overclocked” Dregs, the Light-Bridge here had vanished, leaving only the sapphire mercury sea—a vast, swirling expanse of liquid metal that reflected the chaos in the sky.
I suppose I could have tried to make my way to another light bridge but that would have taken more time that I didn’t have. Instead I leapt between the drifting Stabilizer Platforms and decided to make my way across the way – my movements fueled by a jittery, industrial heat. Below me, the mercury within the seas didn’t splash; it groaned, ripples of heavy metal catching the orange glow of distant forest fires. In the reflection, I saw glimpses of myself as I once was—a towering architect of the Abyss, wings of dark matter blotting out the sun.
I had to use a good bit of energy to make the trip – especially to keep myself ‘cloaked’ from view – but eventually I landed on the shore of the Central Island with a heavy thud, my feet sinking into the luxurious soil. Here, the wild, crystalline chaos of the outer islands was gone, replaced by order and energy.
The Vril-Gardens of the Spire
One of the famous Crystal Spires loomed ahead of me like a frozen lightning bolt. It was still a bit of a walk to get there but I knew I had to reach that goal quickly before the Children of Mu discovered my presence. Having been to Lemuria before, I knew the Spires weren’t mere buildings, but instead Harmonic Conductors. Each one acted as a tuning fork for the continent of Lemuria, pulling the raw, chaotic “heavy” energy of the flat earth’s core and refining it into the polite, golden hum the Mylars used to power their immortality.
Between me and the Spire I wanted to reach were the Vril-Gardens. The Earth here felt different. In the Resonance-Wells scattered through the garden, I could hear the planet “breathing.” The Mylars had harnessed the heartbeat of Gaia, turning the wild pulse of the world into a ticking clock.
Knowing I needed to hide and not wanting to continue to use my hellfire to cloak my appearance I entered the gardens – the sensory assault was immediate. The grass hummed with a frequency designed to induce “tranquility” in any living thing that touched it. For a lumenarc being of my constitution, it felt like walking on a bed of electric needles – every blade of grass was a uniform height – PI to be exact – a mathematical joke that only a Mylar [or a nerd] would find beautiful.
I quickly discovered that the Vril-Gardens weren’t the easiest place to hide – instead of a place of shade, it was more like a high-tech conservatory of “Solidified Light.” To a creature of shadow like me, every inch was a potential exposure. Thankfully the garden had a few Resonance Monoliths – giant slabs of translucent obsidian that hummed with the planet’s pulse. I slunk behind one of these pillars, pressing my cold back against the warm, vibrating stone. The obsidian was semi-translucent; if a Mylar had looked closely, they would have seen my skeletal silhouette trapped within the stone’s reflection like an insect in amber – however nobody noticed me.
I look back towards the island of the Dregs – by now it was a bonfire in the distance, drawing the Sky-Huntsmen and other protectors of Lemuria, yet the Lemurian capital was far from empty. As I moved deeper into the garden, I saw them. Mylar civilians—the artisans, the mathematicians, the “Symphonists”, and more—yet nobody seemed to be all that concerned with the disturbance in the distance. This intrigued me. I realized that more and more of them were gathering around Resonance-Wells – circular depressions in the earth lined with polished obsidian. Very quickly thousands of Mu Men appeared – nearly all of them draped in gossamer robes and arranging themselves in ever growing concentric circles.
“Interesting – they’re meditating.” I observed from my vantage point. I realized they weren’t fighting – they were praying…with their biology. Their eyes were closed, their breathing synchronized in a shallow, mechanical rhythm that echoed the “ticking clock” heartbeat of the nearby Spire.Lilith’s children were acting as a kind of collective biological filter – by staying in harmony, they were trying to “sing” the power damaged grid back into stability, attempting to drown out the discordance I had unleashed.
As they were distracted, I slunk away from the monolith and towards the cover of the Mist-Basins – shallow, marble pools where the liquid Vril was aerated into a thick, silver fog to hydrate the upper tiers of the garden. As a bonus I was able to hide my appearance as I waded through the waist-high mist of the pools. The vapor was heavy and tasted of ozone, but it provided the perfect shroud. In this fog, my ashen body was indistinguishable from the swirling silver clouds.
When the mist thinned near the edge of the pool, I was close to the Spire. All that was left for me was to pass through the Pulse-Hedges—walls of tightly woven, glowing vines that didn’t grow from soil, but from floating metallic rails. These hedges moved – shifting every often to follow the “ideal” geometric alignment of the Mylar Suns – I had to time my movements to the mechanical click-hiss of the hedge repositioning. Having solved this during my last trip here, it posed no trouble for me this time. Exiting the gardens, the base of the Spire was now only yards away—a wall of smooth, vibrating quartz that promised a way up, and a way in.
The Spires of Lemuria
I looked up at the quartz needle before me. There were seven of these Spires, each one a different “note” in the Lemurian scale. These were the anchors of the main island. If I could shatter even one, the entire continent might tilt, but as I reached the base, I realized the Spires had a secondary purpose: Detection!
The ground beneath me didn’t just vibrate; it began to pulse with a localized red hue. My presence was a clear “stain” in the frequency. The “Schedule” of the wind suddenly broke as a gust of air, cold and smelling of ozone, whipped through the garden, moving against the natural flow.
I looked back fearfully towards the Mu Men gathered in the gardens, preparing to use my hellfire for the inevitable battle. At first I was relived to see that the thousands of Mylars in the Resonance-Wells didn’t open their eyes, but then I realized that their humming…shifted – it went from a peaceful C-sharp to a sharp, jarring D-minor.
“They know,” I fretted, wondering if I had enough life-force to put up a fight. “They aren’t looking at me with their eyes, but they surely feel the error in their harmony.”
Just then, thhe Spire above me began to change colors and signal a discordant note. That’s when I knew Lilith’s Children were coming for me.
“You’ve let the wrong guest through the gates,” I growled in protest, looking up as the Spire’s quartz surface began to ripple like water. “And I brought my own music.”
The transition from the meditative silence of the Mylar to the dissonance of the Spire was instantaneous. I was no longer a shadow in a garden; I was a virus being targeted by a celestial immune system. The shift in their humming was the most bone-chilling sound I had heard in eons. I saw how thousands of Mylars, still seated in their Resonance-Wells, didn’t reach for weapons. They didn’t even stand up. Instead, their collective vocalizations began to grind against the air. The D-minor chord they struck was a “Searching Frequency”—a sonic sonar designed to isolate any object that didn’t vibrate with their mandated peace.
I felt the sound waves hitting my ribs like physical punches. Every time the “Searching Frequency” passed over me, the Shard of Varysha in my chest pulsed a guilty, neon violet, betraying my position. I quickly ripped out the Shard from my ribs and held it under control in my hands, using a bit of magic to shroud it.
My actions were just in time – the apex of the tower shot down a beam of light towards me – it was Solidified Harmonic Energy. Thankfully it missed. Clocking myself, I moved to a new spot – searching for access to enter the Spire.
To my surprise, the tower’s quartz surface began to ripple, turning from solid stone into a viscous, liquid-glass state. I saw my window – diving into the wall and forcing my wall inside. When I landed I found myself in one of the Vril-Conduits—the very channels that were now boiling with violet energy!
It was a bit more than I’d bargained for. I was submerged in a thick, glowing sludge. It burned like Illusia! It felt like crawling through molten sapphires, but on the positive side it surely masked my presence and Baal knows I’d been through worse. I just hoped that the Mylar’s “Searching Frequency” couldn’t penetrate the dense, hyper-vibrating liquid of their own power source and I relished in the irony of it all.
Inside the conduit, the pressure was immense and I was sucked upward, carried by the centrifugal force of the Spire’s “circulatory system.” Confident in my divine protection, I let myself be transported by conduit – hoping it would further hide me.
The Hall of Lamentations
In a short time I was spat out of the conduit and onto a floor of polished, translucent pearl deep within the Spire’s anatomy.
I stood, dripping violet slime, and looked around. I was in a vast, vaulted chamber where the walls weren’t decorated with art, but with Light-Etchings. Thousands of lines of glowing script spiraled upward toward the ceiling—I recognized the drawings immediately – it was the original Lamentations of Lyra.
“Hello, old friend.” I chuckled as I touched the wall, the quartz shivering, all to happy to remember Lyra’s pitiful poetry. I could feel her grief in the stone and it filled me with energy. “Perhaps it’s time to get this party started?”
The Apocrypha of Azazel 