The entrance into the heart of Mu was not a journey into a building, but an immersion into a living, breathing prayer. So much had changed since my last visit to this locale ages ago when I had retrieved Lilith from the secret prison I’d created for her in the bowels beneath the Crystal Towers. You’ll recall that I dragged Lilith with me to Illusia and presented her as a gift to Lucifer to do with as he saw fit. I’d also gifted my dreaded master with my latest creations as the time – a gaggle of demons I called ‘baals.’ Lucifer was so giddy with delight that he renamed himself “Baal-Zebub.” For a time I was a star in Illusia – the toast of the town and my master’s favorite again.
I’d assumed that Lucifer – THE DEVIL – would do what came naturally to him and take the demons I gave him to abuse Lilith and torture her to death. Yes, that was the plan. So how was I to know Baalzebub would take Lilith as his queen and that she would later become the Mother of Demons for him? Or that she would turn Lucifer against me? [Well that part I should have foreseen I guess, but hey we all make mistakes]. As you can imagine my subsequent visits to Illusia took a turn for the worse ever since – because Lilith used every opportunity since to make my life a living hell.
And now I was in the kingdom of Lilith’s first children – The Mylars. From their time as the first mortal race that dominated the flat earth, they’d always been an advanced civilization. Their tech had continued to evolve during the millennia in which they’d separated themselves from the rest of the planet behind their Ice Walls. And since my last visit here, their society had continued to invent and advance. To a scientist such as myself, the world of Lemuria was fascinating.
Yet I wasn’t here to admire. I was here to acquire. I was here to finally lay my hands on Dagaal!
The Great Alignment
I’d been playing the part – casting myself as Sub-Scribe Elu – and using my god-like powers to convince the Mylars that The Shard of Varysha was an alchemical anchor that could protect their precious Great Alignment. The Peace-Keepers bore me through an Obsidian Portal—a massive, monolithic gateway that seemed to swallow all ambient shadow—and further into the heart of the Great Pyramid – closer to my goal. Along the way I sifted their minds – looking for clues I could use against them.
To the Mylars, the Great Alignment was the “Golden Thread” that prevented the world from unraveling. They believed that the Prime Architect, A’H, hummed the world into existence, and that all suffering was merely the “Static” of the mortal soul. The Alignment was thus a collective, eternal prayer and their hope was that by syncing their heartbeats to the Great Pyramid, they were purging the “weight” of mortality away and freeing themselves spiritually to ‘ascend’ to their highest forms.
Put another way – the Great Alignment was the shield that the Children of Mu used to control the “Friction of Time.” With Alignment in harmony, a flower never wilted because the “concept” of wilting was harmonized away. Yet if the Alignment were broken, the Mylars feared they wouldn’t just die, instead the entire flat earth would crumble into the “Heavy Dust” of the evil frequencies of the rest of the lesser mortals on the planet and the Children of Mu would then lose their divinity in a single, agonizing breath.
I was all too happy to help them make the nightmare into a reality!
The Ritual of the First Integration
The deeper we moved inside the ziggurat, the more air lost its crisp chill and became a heavy, viscous medium that tasted of burnt gold and ancient incense. It was like “liquid light,” a pressurized spiritual atmosphere that pressed against my bones like a warm tide. To the Mylars, I gathered that this was the breath of the divine; to me, it was a suffocating shroud.
Eventually The Peace-Keepers lowered me onto a dais of shimmering obsidian at the very lip of a central chamber they called The Well of Siphons. The air was now pressurized golden mist that felt like liquid sunlight. Looking around I saw a masterpiece of inverted architecture – the inside of the Great Pyramid did not reach for the heavens, it anchored the heavens to the earth. The walls were a dizzying array of inverted tiers, carved from translucent alabaster that glowed from within. On these tiers hovered thousands of white-robed monks, their bodies perfectly still, their eyes rolled back in a collective trance.
Their minds reveled to me that they were the “Symphonists,” and their voices provided the constant, sub-sonic drone that acted as the literal foundation of the continent of Lemuria. That’s when I realized, these clerics weren’t just praying; they were levitating the island of Mu with the sheer, focused power of their breath!
“The Scribe’s spirit is tattered,” the High Priest whispered with his mind to the others. I gathered that he assumed I did not hear him, but that was a foolish underestimating of my true powers. He added. “Elu carries the soot of the outer world. Before he can offer the Anchor to the Well, he must be Transfigured.”
What happened next was a ritual that would have been worthy of my own Life Labs. Four Priests stood at the cardinal points of my dais, holding staves tipped with Echo-Sapphires. They began to chant—a high, piercing melody that lacked any mortal emotion. I recognized it immediately – they were attempting to perform a Harmonic Cleansing.
To a Mylar, it was a bath of pure grace. To me, it was kind of spiritual flaying. Had I not been a god, it would have perhaps destroyed me. The sound waves that pummeled against me acted like invisible sandpaper, peeling back the “stains” of my journey. I felt the scum of the Dregs being vibrated off my physical form; I felt the spiritual-dust of the Shard attempting to be burned away by the sheer purity of their song. But then it went deeper. The song began to tug at my Disguise.
The silver shroud I had stolen began to vibrate so violently it turned translucent. The illusion of “Sub-Scribe Elu”—the humble, fleshy face I had projected—began to flicker. Beneath the mask, my true, ashen skin and skeletal jaw threatened to break through.
“Hold,” I commanded myself, my fingers digging into the obsidian dais. “Do not let the fire out. Not yet.”
I had to use a bit of my remaining Hellfire not to attack, but to insulate. I protected my ruse by wrapping my true essence in a thin, suffocating layer of violet shadow, hiding it beneath the “white noise” of the Priests’ cleansing. It was like trying to hide a bonfire inside a paper lantern while someone poured water on it.
The pain was exquisite – but I relished it – for I knew it would get me to my prize.
The Mylars’ “holy” light continued to try to “correct” me, even trying to “heal” the blackened cavity in my chest where my own dark soul tortured all the captured souls I’d collected for myself. There was no way I was going to let them succeed.
“He resists the Grace,” one Priest noted, his tone shifting from pity to suspicion. “The discordance in his soul is… ancient. It has deep roots.”
Deep roots. My mind laughed. If they only knew.
“The outer islands are cruel,” the High Priest replied, though I sensed his hand tightening on his staff. “The soot of the Dregs goes to the bone. Increase the Resonance. We must see the soul of the Mu before we trust him with the Anchor.”
The chanting doubled in volume. The light became a physical weight, pressing me down into the obsidian. To distract myself and nullify their efforts my mind drifted again to Lilith. That wasn’t my brightest idea because I ended up scaring myself! Was Lilith the one directing this “Cleansing”? Was she watching from the high galleries, laughing as the Mylars tried to “harmonize” a god of the abyss into a singing puppet?
“Look at me, then,” I growled internally, my teeth grinding together as the light threatened to shatter my ruse. My anger rose. “Look at the soul you want to integrate, Mu Men. But remember, little priests… when you stare into the Dark Sun, you don’t see the spots. You just go blind.”
The Light of the Ritual reached a crescendo—just as my disguise was about to snap like dry parchment— I saw it!
During the sacrilege that was this entire farce, a centerpiece in the ceiling was continually being lowered. The minds of the Mu Men priests were controlled the descent of what they’d named The Cage of Living Sunbeams. I gathered that this was the apparatus they’d planned to use to finally ‘harmonize’ me. Eventually this cage descended to the geometric center of the hall. I saw beams of concentrated Vril crossed and knotted like golden silk, creating a shimmering lattice of light that defied the eye. And there, suspended in that cage of celestial fire, hung Dagaal!
The object of my desire for ages. The precious piece of my own existence that would make me complete again. I’d quested for it for so long. And now Dagaal hung in the center of the Well as it let out a low, mourning vibration – sensing my proximity and my agony, the Bone Dagger suddenly pulsed with a violent grey light.
The Priests stumbled. The Harmony broke for a fraction of a second.
“No…” I gasped, my mind tightening around the Shard of Varysha to prevent their taking it from me. I made my voice thin, like a Mu Man whose essence was being unraveled by the light. “The… the Anchor. It is a holy burden. I was told… only one who has walked the the path may offer it to the Well. For the Great Architect… let me finish the song.”
The High Priest panicked. Around us, the Pyramid groaned—a sound not of a world out of tune. The grey light of Dagaal flickered above us, and for a second, a shadow cast by a pillar seemed to take the shape of a winged female god.
“The Void-Relic is starving,” a voice cried out from the higher galleries.
“The siphons are drinking the air!” Another screamed.
“If the new Anchor is not offered,” one of the four priests at the corners of my altar struggled to explain.
“The Great Alignment will break,” The High Priest concluded. “The sea will reclaim the Mu!” The ethereal Mu Man looked down at me, his clinical detachment wavering under the pressure of his collapsing world.
“The Relic… it responds to him!” numerous clerics from the inverted tiers cried out, their voices filled with a mixture of terror and religious awe.
“The Anchor and the Source are calling to one another!” Others pointed at wild lights bursting forth from Dagaal.
I lay on the dais, pretending to gasp and writhe, even causing my silver shroud to smoke as if from the intensity of the light. I let myself appear to be raw – my spiritual skin flayed open.
“Stop the Cleansing!” The High Priests commanded. “Bring Elu to the Aperture! The Alignment cannot wait!”
The Mu Men believed my”Transfiguration” was over. They thought they had cleaned me and that I could save their world. They didn’t realize they had sharpened me and I was about to cut them to pieces.
In the frantic rush that followed, my dais was hovered closer to the center of the room. I was certain I would get my hands up on Dagaal and then use it to destroy Lemuria, and yet seeing the Bone Dagger again sent a jolt of primal recognition through my frame.
Physically the dagger was a hand and a half of nightmare. Its form was surely an affront to the Mylar’s love of symmetry. The handle and hilt were gnarled, looking like a piece of drift-wood pulled from a river of blood, but it was the blade that held my gaze. It was a single, seamless piece of bone, twisted into an illogical, fiendish corkscrew. The coils of the bone narrowed with terrifying precision, spiraling down from the width of a fist to a point so incredibly sharp that the final apex was invisible to the naked eye. It didn’t just cut flesh; it pierced the fabric of the spirit.
It was my rib.
Lucifer had stolen it during a torture session in the pits of Illusia, laughing as he carved it into a tool of my own undoing.
“It is the same bone by which you shall one day be destroyed,” Lucifer’s voice echoed in my memory, cold and mocking.
My god-like rage boiled beneath the surface, a violet heat that I had to bury under layers of feigned weakness. Perhaps I played the role a bit too well – for as I lay on that dais looking up at Dagaal, a different kind of heat took hold.
Paranoia.
I felt a phantom itch at the base of my throat—the exact spot where Lilith, the Queen of The Underworld and my hated rival, loved to threaten to press the tip of Dagaal during my visits to Illusia. Although I was the very god most responsible for her existence, Lilith had always hated me with a passion that only a being of her station could achieve. She saw me as a rival for Lucifer’s favor, a relic The Fall that needed to be discarded.
If Lucifer had truly given her the “go-ahead” to finally end me, where better to do it than here? In a place where my power was suppressed by a thousand singing voices, and my weapon was caged?
Is she behind that silver screen? I feared. Is she whispering into the ears of the High Priests, guiding their “science” to ensure that when I reach for my rib, the trap will snap shut?
Was this entire pilgrimage to Lemuria a theater of her making? Had she whispered the location of my rib to the wind just to lure me here? I looked into the deep shadows behind the white-gold pillars, half-expecting to see the burning, multi-faceted eyes of the Baal Demons I had once commanded, now turned into her silent sentinels.
Every rhythmic pulse of the Pyramid felt like Lilith’s heartbeat; every flicker of the grey bone felt like a wink from Lucifer himself. I found myself going insane!
“The Sub-Scribe is nearing the Silence,” The High Priest intoned, his voice a layered harmony that vibrated through my very marrow.
Thankfully it broke my fears.
I watched as he leaned over me, his face a mask of smooth, translucent skin, devoid of any of the original Mylar features. He didn’t look at me with eyes; he looked at me with his “Aura.” I forced my limbs to remain limp, my breathing a wet, shallow whistle. Inside, I was a storm of violet fire, ready to reduce this entire temple to ash. But I had to wait. If Lilith was indeed watching, any display of my true divinity would be the signal for the trap to spring.
“Steady, Sub-Scribe Elu,” the lead Peace-Keeper whispered, misinterpreting my shiver of dread for the tremors of a dying Mu Man. “We are at the threshold. The Aperture shall heal you, or it shall claim you. The light within this place is the most pure of all the world. If your spirit carries any shadow, the Aperature will devour you.”
His voice broke my fears. “Let it try,” I thought, my eyes fixed on the twisted bone of my own rib. “I’ve come to get my prize and I will not be denied now!”
The Apocrypha of Azazel 