The air atop Nektar’s Cauldron was thin and biting, a cold that didn’t just touch the skin but sought to settle in the marrow. It carried the sharp, familiar sting of sulfur, belched from the volcanic vents that honeycombed the peak below—a scent that, to me, was sweeter than any perfume of Inanna’s Pleasure Palace. I leaned back into the obsidian curves of my high-backed chair, the dark stone still radiating a faint, residual heat from the day’s pale sun, like the fading fever of a dying god.
My bedroom’s balcony hung over the jagged, ash-stained expanse of Kra, a panoramic masterpiece of ruin that stretched toward the hazy horizon. For the first time in an eternity, the restless storm in my chest had stilled. I felt the heavy, delicious weight of peace. I swirled the Blood-Wine in my chalice, watching the thick, copper-hued liquid coat the glass in slow, viscous tears. I took a slow, deep sip, letting the metallic sweetness linger on my tongue.
It was perfect.
I was perfect.
The Majesty of Misery
Looking out across my domain, I drank in the desolation. Directly below the Cauldron lay the Petrified Forest, a skeletal graveyard of stone trees that had once been lush and green before my shadow first touched this land in ages past. Now, their grey, crystalline branches clawed at the sky in a permanent gesture of supplication. No bird sang there; no beast roamed. It was a monument to stillness, exactly as I had intended.
Beyond the forest, the horizon was marred by the jagged silhouettes of the Great Refineries. These were the factories of my ancient industry – granted they lacked the tech of the Mylar world, but they served my purposes as sprawling complexes of iron and soot that never slept. From this height, I could see the flickering orange glow of the furnaces and the black plumes of smoke that choked the sky, staining the clouds a permanent, bruised purple.
With the power of my divine eyes, I watched the movement around the pits—from afar I could see thousands of tiny, insignificant shapes scuttling through the ash. These were my legions of the broken: Babel Derk overseers cracking whips over the bowed backs of slaves, a motley crew of forsaken mortals unlucky enough to be caught in my webs. Common Derk goblins made up the majority, but there were plenty of Derkka dwarves too – their once-proud craftsmanship now bent to the forging of my engines. Besides that majority, I could spot the frantic, stumbling gait of humans and even the occasional, elegant silhouette of an Amorosi elf – their golden hair matted with coal dust as they hauled sledges of raw obsidian to the pits.
Just then te wind shifted, bringing with it a faint, discordant chorus of groans and the rhythmic clanging of hammers. To anyone else, it would be the sound of a living nightmare. To me, it was a lullaby. The landscape of Kra spoke of absolute despair; it was a canvas of grey sand, poisoned rivers, and the relentless, grinding toil of the “lesser” beings that served me.
I smiled, the sensation foreign yet welcome on my skeletal face. Every puff of smoke from the factories, every crack in the parched earth, and every lash of a taskmaster’s whip was a testament to my designs. I had turned the world into a mirror of my own dark soul—harsh, unyielding, and magnificent in its cruelty.
I raised my glass to the horizon, Dagaal in my chest thrumming in sympathetic resonance with the misery below.
“Let them toil,” I whispered into the cold wind. “The foundations of my empire are built on the broken, and the mortar is their tears. It is a stable foundation from which I can build my victory upon.”
The Internal Restoration
My hand drifted to the center of my chest, my fingers tracing the cool, silver embroidery of my robes where Dagaal now rested, hidden but ever-present. Even through the fabric, I could feel the low, thrumming vibration of the bone—I was complete again.
I closed my eyes, and the “Life Lab” rushed back to me. I could still smell the scent of sterile salts and scorched marrow. I could still feel the phantom echo of that glorious, rhythmic agony—the sensation of my own ashen hands, steady despite the tremors of my spirit, reaching deep into the yawning, blackened cavity of my open ribcage. There had been no anesthesia but my own will. I remembered the wet, metallic click—a sound that resonated in my soul—as my stolen rib snapped back into its ancestral cradle.
The change had been instantaneous – like I was born again!
It was admittedly a violent rebirth. For eons, I had carried a hollow space within me, a void that I was forced to fill with the acrid, sulfurous dregs of Lucifer’s Hellfire. The limitations of my ever dwindling lifeforece that Lucifer and Ze had forced upon me ever since The Fall had always been a leash for me – a tether of dependency that Lucifer pulled whenever he wished to see me dance like a trained hound. But when once Dagaal was fused again with my divine frame, that gnawing, pathetic hunger simply withered away.
I inhaled deeply, feeling the sheer weight of my new power. Dagaal was no longer just a lost dagger; it was a self-sustaining furnace of the void – recycling my own essence and refining it into something purer, darker, and…entirely mine!
The tether to Illusia had been snapped.
I was no longer a tenant in Lucifer’s basement, paying rent in blood and service. I was the landlord of my own soul, and the gates of my kingdom were finally closed to the Prince of Lies.
I was free!
The Flickering Threads
Reaching towards a nearby stone table I picked up the Eye of Seraphiel, planning to while away the evening looking at the threads of fate. As I waved a bony finger over The Eye, the starlight within the sphere swirled, thick and sluggish, until the grey wastes of Kra were replaced by the ghost-light of my recent conquest.
The Eye shimmered with the roiling, silver mists of Mu, those mercury-heavy clouds that had once hidden the “perfect” world from the eyes of the unworthy. I watched as the vision sharpened, revealing the Great Pyramid in its final, agonizing moments. It no longer stood as a beacon of celestial geometry; it was a dying beast, its obsidian plates buckling and groaning as the very foundations of the island dissolved.
I tasted the memory on the back of my throat—the sharp, copper tang of their “Great Alignment” snapping like a million glass violins. I saw the High Priests, those arrogant scholars of harmony, falling from their alabaster balconies as the “Solid Light” beneath their feet turned back into meaningless vapor. Their unified choir, which had sung for ten thousand years to keep the foundations of their world in place, but had now dissolved into a million jagged, discordant screams.
I leaned closer to the Eye, a thin, cold smile stretching my lips. It was the ultimate irony. The Mylars had spent ages refining their bodies into a single, perfect note, only to find that a single note is easily silenced. By wrenching Dagaal from the heart of their machine, I hadn’t just stolen a battery; I had unmade the logic of their reality.
I watched as the liquid mercury of the Great Canal surged over the white stone embankments, a silent tide of silver swallowing the Cities of Chime. The “Always-Day” of Lemuria flickered and died, and for the first time, those immortal cowards learned the true weight of the dark. I had ended their world with a single note when I made the elegant pull of a bone. It was the most beautiful song I had ever composed.
The Forsaken
The Eye’s surface rippled, the silver mists of Mu curdling into the bruised, sickly purple of a sky I knew well. The light within the sphere turned cold and static, revealing a thread from the past that I never grew weary of revisiting.
There he was: Hacktor Derkillez.
My former pawn, The Great Ghastwielder – the derkka who dared to challenge the gods. I recognized the memory of him as he was crucified to the Tree of the Forsaken – an ancient, calcified growth of iron-wood that fed on the despair of those mortals foolish enough to attempt its ritual, hoping to find answers to their impossible problems. The tree’s thorns, as long as daggers and as jagged as broken glass, had grown through Hacktor’s limbs, weaving his flesh into the bark until it was impossible to tell where the man ended and the malice of the tree began.
“Well perhaps that’s not entirely what happened,” I chuckled, barely paying attention, “but I rather like this version.”
I took another sip of my wine as I imagined Hacktor’s body becoming a map of beautifully rendered pain – a masterpiece I wished I’d personally carved with patient, divine precision. I saw his skin pulled taut over his ribs, translucent and pale, mapped with the dark, branching veins of the necromantic rot I imagined myself gifting him. Every time Haktor attempted to draw a breath, the tree’s thorns shifted, rasping against his bone, ensuring that his consciousness remained sharp, clear, and utterly hopeless.
Eventually Hacktor didn’t scream anymore in my vision—he hadn’t the strength for it—but his eyes, wide and rolling in a face of sunken shadows, told the story of every century he had spent in that singular, static moment of torture. He was a living testament to the price of defying me.
I raised my chalice toward his flickering silhouette, the dark wine catching the light of the Kra fires. Even though I knew my imagination wasn’t true – for Hacktor was long since dead – I relished it just the same.
“To your endurance, Hacktor,” I whispered, the words a cold caress to a false memory. “May you live long enough to see the Firmament fall. I should hate for you to miss the finale simply because your heart gave out.”
I drank deeply, savoring the metallic bite of the wine and the visual feast of his imagined suffering. In the grand tapestry of my world, some threads were meant to be cut, but others—like Hacktor—were meant to be pulled, slowly and eternally, for the sheer, aesthetic joy of the tension.
The Desperate Lovers
I brushed my thumb against the cool surface of the Eye, and the image of the dying Hacktor dissolved into a shimmering, crystalline clarity. The light within the sphere shifted from the purple of decay to a stark, unforgiving white. This was a thread of fate I assumed was a current, the strand vibrating with the raw, discordant energy of the world’s center.
I watched as the vision coalesced into the form of Rhokki. The great warrior god had cleaved through the armies of Gwar and defied the gravitic rules of the most ancient Star Forts to reach the magnetic north pole again – yet for all these feats, Rhokki looked like a broken child. He was standing within the bowels of the Flat Earth, a place where the air hummed with the primal static of the creation that Lucifer and I first wrought at the dawn of time.
Before the forlorn lumenarc there stood the Crystal Veil, the impenetrable barrier I’d placed when I laid the foundation of earth, the veil meant to separate the world above from the deep core of the world. And there, frozen within the translucent strata of the earth like a fly in amber, was Gaia – Rhokki’s star crossed lover.
The massive warrior’s forehead was pressed hard against the cold, unyielding surface of the spectral prison. I could see the steam of his breath clouding the divine cage, a pathetic mist that lingered in the air. Rhokki’s hands, calloused and scarred from an immortal lifetime of slaughter, were splayed against the crystal, his fingers trembling as he tried to find a crack, a flaw, a way to reach the fallen lumenarc who remained entombed in her magnetic prison – her essence ever dwindling as it gave life to the flat earth.
I could see the tracks of tears cutting through the grime on the dimwit’s face. Rhokki was whispering to her—promises of rescue, pleas for a sign—words that would never penetrate the enchanted stone and divine shielding that held Gaia fast. His lover’s visage was forever frozen in a moment of agony – the very instant when she realized Lucifer and I had betrayed her as we married her essence to that of our new world – imprisoning her forever. Ever since that moment, Gaia’s eyes showed her horror, her face depicted her agony, her hair fanned out in the amber light as if caught in a permanent underwater current. She was a goddess in a never-ending painful stasis; Rhokki could do nothing to help her and was thus a god in eternal despair.
“How touching,” I murmured, watching a particularly large tear fall from Rhokki’s chin to the dusty floor. “And how utterly, magnificently futile.”
There is a special kind of beauty in a hope that has nowhere to go. Rhokki believed that love was a force that could crack the foundations of the world. I knew better. Love was merely the grease that made the gears of tragedy turn more smoothly. He would stand there until his legs gave out, or until the world changed so drastically that the crystal finally shattered—but by then, I’d have long since destroyed him and Gaia would have long since forgotten him anyway.
I felt a surge of warmth from the Dagaal in my chest. Their grief was a fine vintage, and I drank it in until I was sated.
The Viper’s Coronation
Shifting my weight in the obsidian chair, the silk of my robes rustled like a snake in dry grass, as I sifted through the threads within The Eye. The white purity of the world’s center bled away, replaced by the jagged skyline of frost-bitten Fubar. To my surprise I found my pawn in the heart of the Grand Plaza—Ramssee.
The clever little snake had finally crawled out of the shadows. He was sitting atop a throne of gold and stone – looking every bit the part of a dime-a-dozen human king. On his brow sat a glorious crown, its jewels likely pried from the cold fingers of those who had stood in his way. Ramssee looked smug, his forked tongue darting out to taste the air as the rabble below—the fearful mortals of Orkney – lords and peasants alive, all roared his name until the very walls of the city vibrated.
I narrowed my eyes. My blood, usually as cold as the Kra winds, began to simmer with a slow, focused heat. I had created that viper from the mud within my labs, and this was how he repaid my patronage? With a crown and a public cheer? Ramssee sought to build a kingdom behind my back instead of finding the Grim as he was tasked with? Did he think I was too distracted by the high heavens to notice the vermin in the basement?
“Where is the myz Kaoz?” I wondered, my gaze scanning the crowd for that shifting, chaotic shadow warrior that was secretly tasked with murdering Ramssee once he found my prize and returning back to The Cauldron to receive his own reward (which also happened to be death). The Myz was nowhere to be seen. Had the myz been seduced by the viper’s ambition, or was he merely waiting in the dark for the right moment to strike?
“Let them play,” I hissed to the empty balcony, my grip tightening on the stem of my chalice until the obsidian groaned. “Let Ramssee believe he has carved out a piece of the world for himself. A viper remains a viper, no matter how much gold you drape over its scales. And Kaoz was but a tool anyway.”
I took a long, slow swallow of the blood-wine, imagining the sensation of my heel grinding into Ramssee’s throat. A king of Fubar is still just a king of trash mortals, and trash is meant to be burned. I would allow him his moment of glory; it would only make his eventual fall into the abyss that much more delicious. After all, the higher the throne, the more bones break when it collapses.
The Seed of the New World
I leaned forward, my breath hitching as the Eye of Seraphiel suddenly spasmed. The warm, rhythmic glow of my triumphs was snuffed out by a sudden, icy pulse that emanated from the sphere’s core, turning the starlight within to a frozen, jagged blue. The image of the viper-king vanished, replaced by a scene that felt uncomfortably intimate, as if the Eye were showing me something I was never meant to see.
The image of a beautiful elfess flickered into view. That she was special compared to other Amorosi was obviously. Her sharp, ethereal features showcased an almost divine element to them – a terrifyingly grace that paled others of her should kind. [Although I didn’t know it at the time, this was Nathily]. She was seated in a sun-dappled glade, and in her arms, she cradled a bundle of linen.
I watched, mesmerized by a creeping dread I could not name, as the elfess adjusted the cloth to reveal the face of a child. It was a beautiful thing, but its beauty was a paradox. Its skin had the glow of elven starlight, yet its eyes held the depth and weight of a mortal soul. And then I saw them—the ears. They bore a slight, unmistakable taper, a subtle bridge between the immortality of the Elves and the fleeting fire of Men.
A strange, cold shiver traveled down my spine, vibrating against the newly seated Dagaal in my chest. A half-breed. A union of Elf and Man was not merely a biological anomaly; it was a variable that tasted of prophecy, a bridge built across a chasm I had spent eons widening. If such a creature could exist, the purity of the old divisions was at risk.
“Who sired this?” I wondered, my fingers tightening on my chalice. “And what role does this whelp play in the architecture of the future?”
But then, the wind shifted. A sudden gust from the sulfurous vents of the Cauldron brought the heavy, familiar scent of the Kra wastes—the smell of burning coal and the sweat of a thousand slaves. It anchored me back to the present, to my undeniable power and my obsidian throne. My mind, cluttered with the wine and the arrogance of a god, began to wander. I dismissed the vision as a trick of the Eye, a flickering shadow of a future that would never come to pass under my reign. I turned my gaze out toward the horizon, watching a distant dust storm roll across the flats, and the vision of the child vanished back into the swirling mists of the Eye, unheeded, already forgotten.
The Marked One
The Eye of pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly throb, the blue ice of the previous vision melting into a parched, ochre yellow. The air within the sphere seemed to ripple with heat, distorting the fabric of time until a new thread pulled itself from the ether—one that did not feel like the past, yet carried a weight too heavy for the future.
I watched as the sands of Loco Land began to shift, an endless sea of gold and bone-dust that moved with a mind of its own. In the center of that desolation stood a man. He was tattered, his clothes little more than sun-bleached rags that flapped in the scouring wind, but his stride was unbroken. This was Kane – my very first pawn.
He looked up, and for a moment, I felt as though he were looking through the Eye, through the miles of wasteland, and directly at me. Kan’s face was a mask of weathered bronze, but it was his brow that held my gaze. There, etched into the skin like a scar made of liquid fire, was the infamous Brand of Exile that my made up alter ego god Yah-Way had given him ages past – cursing him forever with the Mark of Immortality that he could never escape and which would forever make Kane an outcast among his kind.
I leaned back, my mandible curling in a mix of curiosity and disdain. I knew the legends of the Marked One—the first to spill blood, the wanderer who could neither find rest nor the release of death. He was a nomad of the unknown times, a ghost walking the physical world. And I had cursed him to this impossible life.
“Wander all you like, exile,” I whispered, the wine warm in my throat. “The sands of Loco Land will swallow your footprints soon enough.”
What did a man of the desert matter to a god of the mountain? He had no army, no crown, and no dagger. He was a remnant of a broken law, a discarded piece of trash from my past. Yet, as I watched him disappear into a sudden sandstorm, the Brand on his brow was the last thing to fade, burning a hole in the vision that lingered long after the sands had settled. I brushed the vision away with a flick of my wrist, unwilling to let the sight of another’s curse dampen the glory of my own ascension.
The Treachery of Karkemesh
The Eye of Seraphil rippled again, the amber sands of Loco Land bleeding away into the lush, decadent hues of Karkemesh. The starlight within the sphere became thick and perfumed, shimmering with the golden glow of oil lamps and the deep crimson of heavy silks. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a memory of their last victory or a thread of a betrayal currently unfolding—or perhaps a future they were even now weaving in the dark.
I saw Inanna, draped in translucent veils of spun gold, reclining on a divan of tiger-pelt. She looked every bit the serpent-queen of the jungle, her fingers idly tracing the rim of a jeweled goblet. Beside her sat the beast that was Gwar, his massive scarred frame looking absurdly out of place amidst the delicate furniture. He was gorging himself on pomegranates, the red juice staining his tusks like fresh kill, while a troupe of silk-clad dancers moved in a hypnotic, rhythmic swirl around them.
They were basking in the glories I had permitted them to keep, surrounded by a lust and luxury that would turn a mortal’s blood to fire, but which merely served to amuse the fallen lumenarcs. But it wasn’t the opulence of Inanna’s Pleasure Palace that caught my eye; it was the way the heads of my fellow gods were inclined toward one another.
“He is changed,” I heard Inanna’s voice—or perhaps the Eye’s interpretation of her soul’s intent—whisper through the ether. “The Dagaal has made him look upward. He forgets that the roots of his power are here, in the dirt we hold for him.”
Gwar let out a low, rumbling growl of agreement, his eyes narrowing as he looked at a map of the Flat Earth spread across the floor. “A god who looks at the stars forgets to watch his heels. If he reaches for the Firmament, he leaves the throne vacant.”
I watched them for a moment, a cold spark of amusement dancing in my chest. My co-conspirators, my “loyal” friends, were already measuring the drapes in my hall. They whispered of my transformation as if it were a weakness, failing to realize that the Dagaal hadn’t made me forget the dirt—it had simply made the dirt irrelevant.
“Conspire all you like, little monsters,” I murmured, the vision beginning to haze over. “Enjoy your wine and your silks. When I have shattered the heavens, I shall return to see how well your ‘throne’ holds up against the vacuum of the void.”
I swept my hand across the Eye, dismissing the golden warmth of Karkemesh. They were a minor discord in a symphony that was now entirely under my baton. Or so I believed.
The Architect’s False Triumph
I leaned my head back against the cold obsidian, closing my eyes as the Blood-Wine hummed in my veins, and allowed myself a delightful fantasy.
I pictured Lucifer in the lightless bowels of Illusia, standing before the empty pedestal where my rib had once sat in his armory. In my mind’s eye, the side of his paradoxical face that was regal was contorted into a shade of bruised purple, a rage so dense it threatened to crack the very foundations of the deep. I imagined him turning that volcanic wrath toward Lilith, discovering the breadcrumbs of “evidence” I had so meticulously scattered—the Mylar seals, the whispers of her secret pacts, the scent of her betrayal.
I saw her then, the Queen of Night, her poise finally shattered as her own demonic children – the baals – dragged her toward the flaying-pits at Lucifer’s command. I imagined Lilith’s screams echoing through the obsidian halls—a jagged, desperate symphony dedicated entirely to my brilliance. She had tried to use me as a pawn when she’d given Dagaal to the Mylars; now, she was the sacrifice that would buy my silence.
It was a masterpiece of political theater, and I was the only one in the who knew the ending.
Ah, the sweetness of it all.
The Ascent
The Eye of Seraphiel flickered one last time, its light dimming as if the celestial power within was exhausted by the weight of the truths it had revealed. The swirling mists settled upon the jagged, vertical face of my own mountain, the very foundations of the Cauldron that anchored me to this world.
It was getting late and I was ready for bed. My mind was clouded with a bit too much blood-wine and mirth so I watched the vision with a detached, sleepy interest, failing to grasp the proximity of the threat. Three figures were clinging to the sheer obsidian cliffs, mere shadows against the ancient stone, yet their movements were coordinated with a terrifying, rhythmic precision.
In the lead was a man [I’d later later this was Emcorae Azop]. His face was set in a mask of iron, his eyes reflecting a cold, singular light that I hadn’t seen in a mortal for centuries. Behind him came a younger version of that child-bearing elfess I’d seen in an earlier vision, her movements fluid and silent as a mountain lion’s, her fingers finding purchase in cracks so thin they should have been invisible. And bringing up the rear was a massive, furred Drokka warrior whose sheer strength allowed him to punch handholds directly into the volcanic rock [I’d eventually come to know him as Barkla].
The trio moved with a grim, shared purpose—a silence that spoke of a pact signed in blood. I watched as theman reached upward, his hand gripping a narrow ledge of stone just a few dozen feet below what looked curiously like the overhang of my own balcony. They were not just climbing; they were hunting.
But my mind was elsewhere. The warmth of the wine had dulled my instincts, and the hum of Dagaal in my chest whispered of my own invincibility. I saw their struggle as a curiosity, a minor play being performed on the stage of my mountain. I assumed they were merely more vermin, perhaps lost travelers or foolish rebels destined to be dashed against the rocks by the rising winds of Kra.
I didn’t notice the way man’s eyes locked onto the underside of a familiar obsidian railing. I didn’t see the heavy, notched blades strapped to their backs—weapons forged not for war, but for assassination. And I never noticed that tiny dagger that the man had strapped to his side – a common looking black dagger with a red gem in the shape of a “G” in it’s pommel. [Alas, that would have been a pretty important clue to recognize!]
But the vision began to dissolve into the hazy purple of the Eye as Seraphiel’s relic sensed my disinterest, and so I let the orb fall into the chair at my side, turning my head to instead watch the first stars of the evening pierce the smog-choked sky. After all, I was the master of this mountain. I was the architect of the world. Why should I fear three shadows crawling in the dark?
I set my chalice down on the stone table, the clink echoing in the quiet of the peak, and stood, turning towards my boudoir to retire for the night. My movements were no longer labored or heavy; the Dagaal beneath my robes flared with a soft, confident violet light, pulsing in rhythm with my renewed spirit. I walked to the edge of the balcony, the wind whipping my tattered silver silks around my legs like the wings of a fallen moth.
“The Flat Earth is mine,” I whispered to the night, my voice carrying over the scorched plains of Kra.
I could see the path laid out before me, written in the stars I intended to extinguish. I would find the Grim next—the key of shadow. With both Dagaal and the Grim in my possession, I would not just rule this dirt and the insects that crawled upon it; I would shatter the Firmament itself. I would defeat Michael the Mighty, and then march into the blinding, arrogant halls of the Great Creator, A’H, and tear the crown from the Light. Defeating Lucifer would be a given.
I would become the Master of the Abyss. I would become the Lord of the Heavens. I would be the God of All!
“Surely nothing can stop me now.” I mused, a small, dark chuckle escaping my throat as I poured myself another celebratory glass of blood-wine and turned to make my way to my bedroom.
Behind me, from below my balcony, hidden by the deepening shadows of the crags, a hand reached up and gripped the ledge, bringing with it the promise of…Death.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 