"The mirrors!" cried Tariqartha. "That's why they don't work right. They've been usurped, -- by the Thanatoids' haunted angel!"
========

"Shall I sing you a love song while we're waiting for supper to be slaughtered, my ever-twinkling Silverhair?"

"I wasn't kidding about pointy stars up your arse," one Summoning Child, who'd self-codenamed herself Tanith Silverhair, told the other Summoning Child, Tammuz Rhymer of Dukkha, long the latest, faerie-dusted Tom-Tiddly Taddletale, sort of aka Rumour of Lazareme.

"Allow me to at least speak-sling it then. I promise you'll like it. It's about a lowly azura, a mere Spirit Being, -- one conceived in the Celestial Sphere, granted --, who fell in love with a mighty Master Deva. Sooth! The very Master Deva who made Master Devas so much more than mere azuras."

"Not talking Echo and Narcissus are you?"

"Not at all. I call it Mirrors and the Monolith!"

"Just so long as nothing rhymes, Rumour."

========

Once upon a very long time ago, the dozens of constellations we still see in our night's sky, filtered through the Cathonic Zone that they are, were divine beings. Some might call them angels but, in those antique days, they were actual devils.

How our devils came to reside in the Celestial Sphere is, as my friend and occasional critic, Jordan Tethys, is wont to say, quite the story. Suffice to say in this regard that the Sedonship, Sedonshem as some call it, journeyed the stars for multiple millennia after voluntarily fleeing New Weirsystem.

As it did so the devils making it up spread their peculiar form of individualistic evil everywhere they went. Many stayed behind, on one inhabited planet or another; became that planet's gods and goddesses. However, the belief in monotheism, in a Universal Godhood, is rampant throughout the cosmos.

Those who seek this Unity, or Enlightenment, or whatever you wish to call it, disdain worship of the individual. Prefer to contemplate the collective oneness of eternal noneness. Needless to say, the Moloch found such a sentiment positively revolting.

The very notion of souls bound in bliss forevermore was anathema to his distinctive, and distinctly materialistic, code, -- namely, give me your poor, your sick, your hungry, and I'll make them not quite so sick, so poor, so hungry. Only if they give me what I want, their undiluted devotion, of course.

They don't, they can take their chances dying. See if they even make it to the Celestial Sphere for all I care. Been there, done that, and wouldn't recommend it to my mother-in-law. Not that Dark Sedon has a mother-in-law as such. Unless it's Miracle Memory, of the Mother-In-Lawlessness of all Machines variety.

Since Master Devas, as opposed to our later-day Demon King and his three sons, the Great Gods, were Spirit Beings, had no bodies they could call their own, -- unless they fused together, in which case, needs be, their individuality had to be subsumed beneath an alpha male, the Thrygragos Brothers, or an alpha female, the likes of Pyrame, Vetala, and Divine Coueranna --, one might think such an overtly live-for-the-moment attitude bizarre.

Reality though, when you think about it realistically, had to be a contrariwise matter altogether. Be entirely unrealistic to expect such well-developed egos to seek any higher form of unification. Much more natural would for them to seek to subvert it. Which is what they first entered the Cel-Sphere specifically to do.

No one can say how long they stayed there; many thousands of years would be a conservative estimate, perhaps tens of thousands of years would be closer to the truth. And they were worshipped, as individual entities too. But they had to funnel ever-increasing percentiles of this adulation quotient to the Grandfather Godhead.

It's said that our Head's eventual Grandfather, who always took a percentage of what was passed up the line by his children for himself, feared Cel-Sphere's Overall Divinity. That God the Blob, as our Moloch referred to the Cosmic Godhead, was well along assimilating even him. Sed couldn't have that of course, so he ordered his devic daughters to fuse themselves as never before.

Did as bade, Earth's future goddesses did. Melded into a Byron Spawn, one of that Great God's three first born, Serathrone Hallow as Utopians came to name her. Devils referred to her as Seductress. Understandably so. That was her job, -- to seduce God the Blob.

Big Boss Blob though was sexless; neither male nor female, -- no Yahweh or Marduk him, no Isis or Ishtar her. Nor any other sex you might imagine. Arguably Blob wasn't even a distinct entity, merely a collection of next to an infinite number of distinct entities; their souls at any rate.

Seductress though was bent on introducing old Blob to erogenous instead of contiguous zones. She certainly got His, if I can start using gender-specific reference, attention.

Ah, but what's this all got to do with constellations? First of all, appreciate that we see only a very few of them. Here on the Head, for example, we see none of those visible on the Outer Earth within 45 degrees of the South Pole. It follows therefore that on other planets they see entirely different constellations. One of these latter was what we'll call Labrys.

Imagine the Sign of the Cross. Shorten and thicken the arms. What's it look like now? The Sign of the Hammer; Thor's Hammer in your part of the outside world, Silverhair. Flatten then give the arms hands and spread the fingers out like a fan. That's Labrys, a double-headed war axe; the curve of the fingertips being the edges of its blades.

Think now of another constellation, one seen on Earth, that of Virgo. As you probably know, she's on the Meridian in June but is more generally identified with August. Consider Labrys akin to Capricorn in terms of the zodiac. If the Maiden represents the heat of Summer then the Battle Axe represents the cold of Winter.

Heat and Cold. Opposites yes, but attractive, -- like opposite poles of a magnet, if you will. They'd also be Master Devas; Sedon's favourites next to his Great God Sons and pampered Pyrame, his usual mate, before she got paltry paupered and powdered priestly.

According to Illuminaries of Weir, their names are Tantal, as in tantalizing, Thanatos, as in Death, and Methandra, as in Mythland, -- Myth-Land-Ra, queen of Mythland. That's the name of her seldom-visited protectorate, which borders on the former Elysian Fields, now the Ghostlands, within the Mystic Mountains. Not that far north of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon, as it happens.

Back then though they're still Battle Axe and Virgin. Deeply in love they are, these two of Mithras' first born breed of three. Popular and powerful, as in full of worship, too. So, while Seductress is off attempting to seduce God the Blob; as the attention of Sedon and his three sons, most of their remaining offspring as well, is focused on Serathrone's corruptive efforts; Labrys and Mithras' Myth Maiden are conceiving a conspiracy of their own.

Her name, again according to our Utopians, is Klannit. She is, quite literally, Mithras' and Coueranna's claims to the contrary, the first of a new breed of entity, an azura. No full devil though; never was and never will be, I've heard. Not for lack of trying however. Which we'll get to presently.

You'll have heard of the Fall. How God the Blob grew jealous of a mighty angel by the name of Lucifer and cast him, along with all of his followers, out of the Celestial Sphere. Demonology gets a bit screwed up here. Our Lucifer wasn't Sedon. Which isn't to say Sedon isn't Satan, the Great Antagonist. Isn't to say he is either.

No, our Lucifer's a Third Generation Devil, another son of Thrygragos Mithras. Utopian name's Domdaniel. Devils call him Pride and he was the Prime Sinistral of Satanwyck. His story's somewhat similar to the Celestials' Lucifer, -- set himself up as a rival to our Moloch as opposed to their Blob --, so that's probably where the confusion comes in. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's pass forward from the Fall, which was when Devils were booted out of the Cel-Sphere, to them coming to the Whole Earth some six hundred years before the Golden Age of Humankind ended with the Genesea, and carry on well beyond even that fateful event, -- you know all that anyhow.

Sedon's Head is now a reality. Has been for something like two thousand years. Our old pals, Divine Coueranna and Thrygragos Mithras, have been making merry-mating for centuries by now, propagating azuras like clockwork; every year on the Winter Solstice or thereabouts.

Kore's got most of her sisters in Lover-Dad inside her. Of course there's a few exceptions. One's the Pauper Priestess, who's almost the definition of exception. She's long gone though; locked up in the Wingless Sphinx on the other side of the Dome. Another's Vetala. She's in a different sort of prison; a Utopian Prison Pod, as it happens. A third one's our hot-headed ex-Virgo, Mithras' Virgin, Methandra.

Virgin might seem a Miss Misnomer to you. In Klannit we're not talking any immaculate conception; she didn't come into being by parthenogenesis. Then again, Spirit Beings having a Spirit Being does sort of negate the notion of commingling precious bodily fluids, doesn't it? Poesy aside, spirits don't have the bodies to have fluids, precious or otherwise, do they?

Nonetheless, disappointed at her dear angel-azura's fate, -- husband-brother Tantal won't even acknowledge her existence --, and infuriated that Sedon's been after her to take Pal Pyrame's place as his personal pump, again assuming spirits can have sex, Madam Myth's gone off it altogether. Become religiously virginal; won't even share her thoughts let alone her whatever spirits do have.

Who's to say, once you've lost it, you can't find it anew?

Something important happens this second millennial anniversary of Sedon raising the Cathonic Dome out of his own essence. On the Outer Earth, the Dual Entities' Trigon blasts out of Eternity for the start of their seventh lifetimes.

Crashes into the ground, -- blows through the ground, as it happens. Destroys the Twin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the process then carries on straight through Cathonia. All of which triggers the first ever eruption of Sedon's Peak on the Cattail Peninsula. Once Mt Sedon finally settles down, its caldera fills with Molten Brainrock and everything begins to change.

Some years later two runaway human lovers, call them Echo and Narcissus if you wish, Spirit Beings inside them, are the first to behold the lava lake. It's truly beautiful but it isn't hardening. Never will. High in the mountain though, a natural result of the eruption is a nearby hot spring; a pool, more like. A mud bath, to be even more precise.

Our prototype Echo and Narcissus doff their duds and dive in. Cavort about merrily, albeit muddily, despite the chill temperature of the air outside. Who needs the summer sun when you've each other to keep yourselves warm, eh?

Bad things happen. Maybe it's an earth tremor, an after-shock, a mini-eruption. The volcano's last gasp, perhaps. Molten Brainrock spills into the play-pool, Culvert Cavort, scalding the two humans to death almost instantaneously.

Then a good thing happens. A sort of good thing anyhow, -- for devils! Their hosts are dead but the Spirit Beings inside them linger; linger outside their shells, looking at each other futilely. They can no more touch than an ocean an inland lake. Whereupon the male spirit begins to solidify.

This is Tvasitar Smithmonger, the Lazareme-spawned first devil to attain a body of his own. His mate doesn't. And this is Klannit. Once an angel-azura always an azura-angel it seems. Not that the Smith takes that as gospel. He attempts to splash the lava on her; just passes through her though.

Remarkably enough, he determines to fashion her a body. First though, out of the molten Brainrock, he hand-moulds an anvil, tongs, and a hammer for himself. Then, when they're usable, he sets to work seriously. He's good too, -- his shell was a superb blacksmith --, but it's to no avail. Whole thing's a monumental tragedy. Nothing he tries works. Other than him.

Sure, the body's magnificent, but Klannit can no more animate it than, well, an inland lake can reach the sea, her ultimate father. In frustration, he petrifies. Soon Smithy's just a coarse statue of a man, -- a moulded, molten monolith --, standing beside the beautiful Brainrock one of a woman in the midst of all this Godstuff leftover from Trans-Time Trigon's Big Bang.

Reenter Constellation Chastity, -- our hot-headed, virtual virgin. Mythland's Ra is just a Spirit Being but she's looking for her azura daughter. Comes to Sedon's Peak, finds the two statues and, lo, what does she do but animate the female's. The Smith awakens, thinks it's Klannit, and takes her into his arms.

Understandable, I suppose. However, when you're dealing with a born-again virgin; more, Sedon's favourite and, though from a different tribe, Tavvy's superior in every respect; well, I can't say she wiped the floor with him, because they were outdoors, but the local rocks had never been so clean.

It's said Maiden Myth punished him for his effrontery. Forced him to atone by crafting three sparkle-splendid talismans in honour of their long lost mothers, the Trigregos Sisters: Sapiendev, Demeter, and Devaura; respectively Mind, Body, and Soul. Not Past, Present, and Future, -- they're the three Fates.

Their talismans were a crimson crown, actually more like a tiara inlaid with rubies that could be worn either around the forehead or the neck; a silver-blue, curved sword like a scimitar or Persian harpe, one dainty enough for a lady to wield but sharp enough to cut anything; and a scintillant, saffron-glassed mirror that could, darling dot ditto, be used as a shield.

Ma-Ra wasn't done yet. Maid made Monger make three more bodies, these ones in the image and likenesses of the three Great Goddesses Themselves. She was well aware that it wasn't very likely the Trigregos Sisters would suddenly reappear and animate the Smith's creations, but it seemed like a good idea.

Methandra, like Tantal and indeed like their breed-brother, Phantast the Dream Weaver, but unlike just about every other Master Deva you'd care to mention, wasn't particularly patrilinearly-loyal. Had about as much use for Mithras as she did Divine Coueranna, her litter-later sister in that same Great God. Which is to say next to nothing.

The eventual Scarlet Empress of Lathakra kept her own body, the one Smithy intended for her azura daughter, who was nowhere to be found, and decided it might be another good idea if he crafted one for King Cold. Tvasitar said he would consider it and Miss Myth went off to fetch Thanatos, Frozen Isle's future emperor. Before she came back, two things happened of significance.

The first was Klannit had simply been hiding; not wanting her mother to see her in her then-present distress. Very touchingly, and I use the word advisedly, she appeared. Not just appeared but reflected in the Brainrock mirror, what Tvasitar made in honour of Demeter. He could therefore reach out and, I warned you, touch her.

It was as close as they would likely ever get but, again used advisedly, it was something.

The second does not have a great deal to do with our story but it adds a codicil of irony to its ending. Klannit had this great idea. Up north, beyond Cattail, on the backside, the Occipital Region, of the Head, were the Crystal Mountains. It was known caves there had walls so smooth, so crystalline, they were fully functional mirrors.

Angel-azura reasoned that if she was reflected in one wall, reflected in its opposite, in its ceiling, floor, and all about it, she might be able to come solid. Sounds stupid but, unique to all Generation Fours, she can in fact do just that.

So Miss Mirrors trots off to try out her theory, leaving Mr Monolith to harden-harken back into his monumental majesty. Before she returns, before her mother returns with her father, three other female devils, very lowborn ones, happen upon Sedon's Peak.

These three, Crinsom, Ama-Tara, and Susal, were from different tribes, -- can't even remember which was from which devil-daddy any more but, as I said, it doesn't have a lot to do with the matter at hand. Point is, they animated the three statues Smith made of their mutual mothers and, armed with the Trigregos Talismans, became so infused with unaccountable potency they thought themselves capable of anything.

Certainly thought themselves Great Goddesses and figured they were the ones who should be ruling the Head. Consequently, the counterfeit queens brazen-boldly beetled off to bloody-battle Thrygragos. Very nearly beat them too. Didn't though. And, to put it mildly, the Great Gods were so infuriated at their presumptuousness it's a wonderment Hell didn't freeze over for lack of heat.

After cathonitizing the upstart kiddies, -- another first, the three lowborns' became the original stars in the Sedon Sphere --, they somehow traced the three least-yeast Easters' Samsara-Steps to Sedon's Peak and our frustrated monolith. Needless to say, they got the full story out of Smithmonger.

Almost as apoplectic as he was apologetic, in an effort to assuage their anger he crafted them individual power focuses. Not that they needed them to become solid. They already were that. These were Fat Head's Byronmask, Lackland's Cloak of Many Colours, and Mr Myth's mutable cross, -- all of which your pal, Kronokronos Akbar, has managed to get hold of somehow!

Smithy wasn't about to give up his newfangled body, though. Or his talisman, the anvil, from which he extracted all his other devic devices. Not without another blood-brazen bold-battle. Which was something the Great Gods were reluctant to risk. Particularly after such a hair-breadth escape from three litter-lowborns compared to Tvasitar, who was a third of Lazareme's breed-born Third.

What to do? What to do? Then Tantal showed up, along with Sister-Wife Methandra and Triplet-Brother Phantast. Suddenly it was no longer just their decision to make. Primarily because it wasn't just Tvasitar, the two future Thanatoids of Lathakra, and Mithras' other firstborn they'd have to fight.

In a notable display of unanimity, with them were virtually all highborn Master Devas, from all three tribes, -- the likes of Great Byron's Silverclouds and his latter-day two sets of Nucleoids; the Libertine's Unities, Tvasitar's breed brothers, Tariqartha and Azkeecyoos, the women between them, Anthea, Althea, and Metisophia; even such Mithras-maidens as Myrionymous Kore, Strife/Marutia, and Belialma, the future Sinistral Lust of Satanwyck.

To a one they demanded both bodies and talismans of their own. Wisely, if perhaps cowardly, Thrygragos didn't make an issue of it. And that's how devils came not only solid but possessed of their incredible abilities.

The Great Gods had a modicum of revenge however. They chained Tvasitar to his own anvil and Father Lazareme bade him stay there forevermore. Any devil wanted a body, he had to oblige. Dick-dildo power focuses. Even when they all had them, Smithy was forbidden to leave Sedon's Peak. Effectively therefore he became the first devil to have his own protectorate. Except he was a prisoner inside it.

Thus, to end our sad little saga, by the time Klannit returned to Mt Sedon with her fabulous news, that she could become bodily whole within the Crystal Caves, that they could therein be together as much as their former shells had been, Smithmonger couldn't leave the Peak to join her.

Been that way pretty much ever since.

********

Webpage last updated: Summer 2014

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