Location: Fubar – Capital of Orkney
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd Year, Summer
I often find myself amused by the human concept of “power.” They speak of it as if it were a solid thing—a throne of oak or a hoard of gold. They do not realize that power is a liquid; it flows, it evaporates, and it poisons those who drink too deeply from its cup.
With that in mind let me take you back yet again – whilst the events of Emcorae, Nathily, and the Drokka brothers were taking place, and while I was traversing the frigid wastes on my way to Lemuria, remember that I still had another pair of irons in the fire involving my pawns Ramssee and Kaoz – the pair I’d sent to the Akka Mountains in the hopes that they might be able to retrieve the other magical dagger I quested for – the legendary Grim!
You’ll recall I set this plan in motion in the 47th year of the Sixth Age. I wrote about it in Book V of my Apocrypha: The Resurrection of The Grim, Parts V and VI. I sent first sent Ramssee and Kaoz with a simple goal: enter the mountains of Akka, breach the Deepest Depths, retrieve The Grim, and return to me.
One would think that being an Arch-Demon of the First Order would command a certain level of administrative competence from one’s subordinates. Apparently, in the Sixth Age of the Flat Earth, INcompetence was the only thing in surplus.
Unfortunately while I was away in Lemuria, risking my neck getting Dagaal back, my little “Project Fubar” evidently decided to go off-script. I’d returned to my sanctum at Nektar’s Cauldron fully expecting to find Ramssee groveling at my feet with The Grim in his sweaty palms and Kaoz right beside him – both of them begging me for life. Instead, I found a cold empty throne and a distinct lack of magical black daggers!
Naturally, I did what any reasonable master of the dark arts would do. I prepared to “binge-watch” The Fates.
Blood Wine and Chill
Since I was back home and my pawns were nowhere to be found, I wanted to know why. I told my goblin servants NOT to disturb me under penalty of death and then retreated to my bedchamber – a room draped in shadows and the faint, comforting scent of sulfur, decaying bones, and old parchments. Along the way, I snatched a carafe of 400-year-old blood wine from the cellars—vintage, with subtle notes of iron, disease, and dirt—along my favorite chalice (the one carved from the femur of a particularly stubborn leped). I then eagerly hopped into my oversized bed, propped up my pazzierra pillows, and reached for The Eye of Seraphiel.
The Eye felt cold against my skeletal fingers, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic light that seemed to say, “Oh, you are going to hate this,” but I ignored the psychic warning and settled in with a generous glass of red as I began to flick through the threads of fate.
Sifting through the shimmering visions, I revisited the early days. I watched Ramssee deluding the old King Karl—whispering into the man’s ear like a tick burrowing into hide. I saw him and Kaoz grooming the boy-prince Diked. They hadn’t just scarred his skin; they had performed a masterful bit of psychological masonry, building a future king they could control. And they’d even managed to get the first miners to Akka and open its doors. I’d even paid them a virtual visit to keep Kaoz and Ramssee in line just before I’d left for my Atlantean adventure.
Yes, in the beginning it was all going so well.
But then, the plot curdled.
While I was swimming with the dolphins down in Atlantis, I watched what happened in Fubar – how Ramssee, that over-reaching fool, began to believe he was the author of the story rather than a footnote. He’d helped Diked bump off his father, scare off his older brother, and become king. He’d manipulated Diked into annexing the entire Akka region for the human kingdom of Orkney, and claim ownership rights to all the ‘abandoned’ Drokka treasures just waiting to be recovered. That was all well and good. And I didn’t even mind when I saw Ramssee pocketing the lion’s share of the Akka riches, “donating” just enough to the Orkney nobles to buy their loyalty, even as he was undermining Diked’s rule. But I had a big problem when I saw how my little snake man was dreaming of being an “Emperor of the North.”
An Emperor! I spat at The Eye’s vision. The audacity of a creature who I created? Who thinks he can escape my clutches?
Yet what I saw concerned Kaoz was even worse. It seems he fell victim to the most pathetic of all mortal maladies: love. He hadn’t just betrayed me; he had confessed to Ramssee that he wanted The Grim to buy his way into Inanna’s arms in Ramos. Imagine! A mountain of Myz muscle and rage, reduced to a lovesick puppy pining for a goddess who wouldn’t use him for a footstool. Obviously Inanna was aware of my plans and she was trying to make her own play – there’s no way I was going to let that happen.
I flicked The Eye to the 49th year, showing me that ridiculous “excursion” to Ramos that Diked and Kaoz took. Ramssee had practically packed their bags for them, desperate to get his rivals out of his hair so he could play at being King. For two glorious years, my snake-man was the de facto ruler of Fubar. That’s when recalled the virtual visit I’d paid him just before I left for Lemuria—I’d materialized in his bedchamber, looking particularly looming and eldritch, and threatened him with every terror in the Illusian handbook if he didn’t have my prize ready upon my return.
And yet, Ramssee wasn’t here.
“Am I losing my touch?” I mused aloud, the sound of my voice echoing against the vaulted ceiling.
Letting Seraphiel’s orb fall onto the bed sheets, I held up my chalice, looking at my visage in the reflection. It was, by all objective standards, ghastly. A stark, ancient skeletal skull, teeth grey and jagged, with fiery green eyes that glowed like embers in a gale. I looked like the nightmare that nightmares have when they can’t sleep.
“Seems scary to me,” I surmised, taking another thoughtful sip of blood wine.
I tried smiling—a broad, terrifying snarl that bared every monstrous tooth in my jaw. I even practiced my “I am going to flay your soul” glare.
“Yup, still scary. Still got the ‘Grand Doom’ aesthetic down to a science.”
So then why didn’t I scare Ramssee enough to get him to do my bidding? What gives? Had the mortals grown so accustomed to the darkness that they no longer feared the dark? Or was Ramssee simply so blinded by his own “Emperor” fantasies that he’d forgotten who held his leash?
I leaned back into the plush silk of my pillows, the Eye of Seraphiel casting a rhythmic emerald pulse against the dark bedcurtains. I wanted to understand exactly what had transpired during my tenure in Lemuria—how my carefully curated garden of malice had grown so wild in my absence.
Immediately, I let out a dry, rattling laugh as I focused the Eye on the summer of the 51st Year. The vision was crystal clear: I saw the look of pure, concentrated bile on Ramssee’s face the moment the heavy iron gates of Fubar groaned open to admit Diked and Kaoz. My poor little pawn had spent two years draped in the stolen robes of a de facto King, tasting a power he was never meant to hold. To see him forced to stand and cede that high chair back to the stuttering, insecure Diked… well, it was better than any play ever performed in the theaters of Ramos.
It is a delicious irony, really. Ramssee had spent years cultivating the lords and nobles of Orkney, turning them into a pack of bloated parasites who lived for the taste of Akka gold. But the Steward was a creature of greed himself, and he had been funneling the lion’s share into his own secret vaults, tossing only a pittance—a few gilded crumbs—to his wealthy patrons to keep them quiet. That arrangement was all well and fine as long as the “Money Train” was moving, but the tracks had finally hit a wall.
The Eye showed me the soot-stained faces of the miners, their picks shattering against the stubborn, ancient stone of the Deepest Depths. The flow of treasure hadn’t just slowed; it had ground to a halt. Naturally, Ramssee did what viperz do best: he shifted the blame. He whispered to the nobles that the lack of gold was due to Diked’s return – the still inexperienced king’s “royal mismanagement” and “extravagant tastes.” I watched as Diked, oblivious to the source of the rot, felt the seat of his throne getting hotter with every passing day.
The threads showed me how the pressure began to reach a boiling point as the months rolled by. The cold air in Fubar became thick with a frantic, desperate energy. Kaoz and Diked were like caged animals; they both wanted to return to the silken comforts of Ramos, but they were trapped by their own failures. Both knew that without The Grim, Inanna wasn’t about to welcome a disgraced King or a brutish Myz back into her embrace. To her, they were only as valuable as the prize they carried.
As for Ramssee, it was clear he cared not a whit for my long-sought dagger. It was obvious that he had no intention of ever fulfilling his mission for me; he’d forgotten who truly owned his soul. He was more than happy to promise The Grim to Kaoz and Diked—he practically begged them to take it and run away to Ramos, provided they never returned. But the problem for all of them, the hilarious, cosmic joke of it all, was that the human miners of Fubar simply couldn’t get the Drokka’s vault open.
They were all standing on top of a mountain of secrets, screaming at each other while the real prize remained as silent as the grave.
But then then there were a number of threads about a seemingly insignificant matter – an arranged marriage that Diked’s father Karl had made for him with a rich merchant from Monthaven named Merrill Finch. Since The Eye of Seraphiel does not just show the “what” but also reveals the “why,” and since I had nothing better to do and was feeling the effects of all the blood wine, I languished in bed as I watched the threads of 52 weave themselves into a hangman’s noose for poor Diked.
Despite his father’s plans for him, by the 52nd year, Diked was no longer the boy King Karl had known. Having long since fallen prey to the dark side under tuteledge of my pawns, and later to the intoxicating, soul-rotting wiles of the Goddess of Lust in Ramos, Diked wanted nothing to do with the mundane. To him, Lynsy Finch was a peasant girl, one who offered no thrill to his jaded palate. Besides, he had already taken her charms by force years prior; in his twisted mind then, she was a piece of sour fruit he had already bite into, didn’t like, and tossed away.
Yet, Ramssee—ever the opportunist—knew he, Diked, and Kaoz were cornered. With the Fubar miners now 100% focused on the impossible task of cracking the Deepest Depths, the royal coffers were echoing with emptiness. The Lords of Orkney were clamoring more loudly than ever, their loyalty fraying with every day the gold failed to flow.
I watched Diked squirm. He paced his den, cursing the name of Finch when the Royal Steward reminded him of his father’s promise. Diked’s face contorted with a mixture of boredom and disgust at the thought of it all. But Ramssee was always there, a silver-tongued shadow at his ear.
“Think of the dowry, Majesty,” Ramssee whispered, his voice a dry rustle of parchment. “Let the merchant pay for your fortifications. Let his gold quiet the Lords. You don’t have to love the girl; you only have to marry her purse, then discard her as you see fit. ”
Yet Diked remained steadfast in his refusals – much to Ramssee’s chagrin.
Then the scene shifted to the Spring of 52. I saw Merrill Finch and his son, Dugan, arrive at the gates of Fubar. The rich merchant looked aged, his face etched with the weary determination of a man trying to honor a promise made to his daughter. Dugan stood beside him, his eyes wide with a mix of awe at the castle’s new size and a simmering, hidden resentment for the friendship he used to have with former prince.
I laughed at the tragic gap between the Finch’s expected reality and the new harsh truth. It was clear Merrill had no idea that the “Boy Prince” Diked had been hollowed out and refilled with the rot of my influencer. He didn’t know about the night Diked had taken Lynsy by force years ago, or the bruises she had hidden beneath her high collars. In Merrill’s mind, his daughter was still the blushing bride of a future king. Incredibly, when he set foot in Orkney that spring, Lynsy’s father didn’t even know King Karl was dead. The news had been suppressed, buried under Ramssee’s administrative fog. Merrill and Dugan thus walked into an environment that was anything but welcoming
The Eye showed me their initial audience with the new king . It was painful to watch—even for me. Diked treated them like bothersome insects caught in his hair. He sat slumped on his throne, barely looking at Merrill as the merchant spoke of honor and contracts. He rebuffed them, sneering at the very idea of a King’s blood mingling with that of a peasant – rich or not.
Observing the man, I found Merrill Finch was a man of logic, and in his logic, he assumed he was making the greatest trade of his life. He was a wealthy man, yes—his warehouses in Monthavent and Primcitta were bursting, and his trade routes were perhaps the envy of the east coast. But Merrill surely knew that in the eyes of the world, he was still just a man who sold sundry goods. All his gold couldn’t buy him a drop the blue blood he wanted for his name. The marriage to the royal house of Orkney was his chance to transcend the merchant class; it was his ticket into the annals of history as an official royal. To Merrill, the exorbitant dowry he’d agreed to with King Karl concessions weren’t a loss; they were an investment in his family’s legacy. And worst of all, the poor fool truly believed he was doing it for Lynsy.
As a result, in spite of Diked’s attitude, Merrill wasn’t about to give up and go home without an agreement. Luckily for him, he had Ramssee on his side. Between dozing off and slurping the last dregs of my wine, I watched their meetings—thirty days of grinding, soul-sucking negotiations in the King’s Den. I saw Diked sneer at Merrill and ignore Dugan, treating the Finches like vermin. Merrill’s jaw would set, his eyes flashing with a businessman’s irritation, but he would swallow his pride – always. He didn’t like Diked—and he certainly didn’t trust the oily, smiling Ramssee—but he kept his personal feelings locked behind a professional mask. He was there to close the deal.
It was a masterclass in desperation. Diked left his Steward to handle the details, therefore Merrill Finch spent hours in smoky backrooms with Ramssee, who bled him dry with “administrative fees” and “additional dowry concessions”. At last, they all finally agreed, and Merrill and Dugan signed the last parchment. Lynsy’s father ended up yielding even more of his fortune to the “King’s fortification fund” (which I later Ramssee immediately transfer to his own private coffers). Despite the loss of more gold, Merrill smiled when all was said and done. He stood up, shook Ramssee’s hand, patted Diked on the back, and basked in the warm glow of victory. The wedding was set for the Fall. Merrill left Fubar feeling he had won a great victory, unaware he had just signed his own death warrant and his daughter’s abduction.
“Oh, Merrill,” I hissed, a dry chuckle rattling my ribs. “You thought you bought a queen’s throne, but you forgot to check if the seat was a bed of coals.”
I took a final, slow sip of the last of my wine straight from the carafe, feeling the cold power of Seraphiel’s vibrate through my fingers as strange new threads took shape, but I dozed off for good before I saw the next scenes.
Snoring away I missed what happened next, as the mists within the Eye began to swirl, turning from gold to a bruised, violent purple, revealing a rather important connection that slipped through my grasp…
The Apocrypha of Azazel 