The Cult of Beelzifrus

The infant clung to the young woman as she ran through the forest. He gazed up at the mesmerizing shapes of sunlight in the tree canopy towering overhead. She set him down on a broad flat rock and hastily drew a circle around him with black charcoal. As she untangled herself from his grasp and took a few steps backwards, he reached for her. She stared at him, her lips moving quickly but soundlessly as she clutched a pendant that dangled from her neck, a smooth opal tear drop that began to glow. Her eyes began to glow the same light dappled violet colour as the stone. The two year-old child felt a flicker of fear ignite into a larger flame and big tears began to splash down his ruddy cheeks. Flashes of an incomprehensible horror crowded his mind; many screams and then bodies lying quiet and still on the floor as blood spilled from them in several places. The images receded and he reached out again for the woman, whimpering softy. He tried to move his limbs to climb down off the rock with his relatively recent powers of locomotion, but he quickly realized he couldn’t move, some force was keeping him locked in place. As the woman broke from her soundless chant, she gave him one last look, eyes soft, loving and welling with tears, then turned and ran off, her black hooded cloak rustling up a pile of dried fallen leaves behind her.

The child sat on the rock for what felt like hours, screaming into the forest. His cries fell onto the sturdy bark of trees standing proud and tall around him and onto the soft and decaying bark of some that had fallen and rotted. As the infant stopped to catch his breath and rest his ragged throat, a small chipmunk ran past the rock, stopping to look quizzically at him, twitching his nose. The infant let out a feeble giggle. Gradually he began to notice all the life that surrounded him; scurrying, flying, scuttling, climbing, singing and chirping. His hands relaxed from tightly balled fists and began to explore the rock’s surface. He stroked the soft green moss of so many dazzling shades of green that he found. Sun drifting through the tree canopy dappled his cheeks and lit up the dew drops clinging to the undersides of leaves and ferns around him. He realized he was no longer a prisoner within the circle of black charcoal and he purposefully climbed down off the rock, intent on finding and following some of the animals he had observed. As he made his way down the forest path, twigs snapping under his feet and falling back on his behind a couple of times before gaining his momentum, he began to hear a shrill but mesmerizing whistling tune. He looked for its source among the trees but couldn’t locate it until the sound was quite close and loud in his ears. He whirled around quickly and found himself staring into the iridescent eyes of a tiny dragon. It darted and flitted in mid air, clearly excited, coughing out little flames. It uttered grunts and chortles, squeaks and whistles, almost as if it was trying to communicate an important message. Its shimmering turquoise and lavender wings flapped, catching the falling rays of sun and throwing them back into the air as exquisite rainbow prisms. It hopped onto the child’s head, continuing to chirp and squeak, getting its tiny claws tangled in the boys golden locks. Freeing itself from the mop of hair, it flew down to stare into his green eyes, still talking its strange faery dragon speak, and then stopped suddenly, nodding its head as if satisfied. He started to fly off but the boy remained glued in place, his eyes wide and wondering. It gestured with his head to follow and the boy snapped to, his reverie falling away to a sense of seriousness and purpose. He marched through the forest following after the faery dragon, knowing he was heading towards something very important.

***

King Boloxnor surveyed his kingdom with smug satisfaction, from his gold-plated terrace that jutted from the palace. The edifices below were grey, drab and broken down, the streets reeking. Thankfully he was not low enough to smell them. Bodies hung by their necks from wooden gallows in the town square, great pools of blood shining below them, crows plucking out their eyes, tongues, organs, any bits they liked. A steady stream of workers trundled up the steep slope towards the palace with loaded wheelbarrows. The workers’ flesh was sallow, gaunt, skin stretching over bones with tattered, dirty clothing hanging off them in shreds, denying them even the basic dignity of coverage. There were no sounds other than the crack of a whip from a commander walking alongside the procession and the mocking squawk of crows. There were no children running and playing amongst the cobblestone boulevards, no bakers or merchants touting their goods.

Beside the king on an intricately carved wooden table sat a feast of fresh fruits, meats, spiced fish and ale, mostly untouched. Closer to him on a small flat surface attached to his terrace throne, was a tidy mound of a glowing, glittering, green gemstones, emanating a strange eerie light. The king slammed down the blunt end of a heavy dagger onto the pile of luminous green rocks, repeatedly, crushing them into a coarse powder. He leaned his face down close and took a deep sniff, snorting the substance up his hairy nostril. He gave a loud and gleeful shout, then hacked and coughed for a while, spitting into a golden spittoon at his other side. The slimy sludge glowed green against the gold. Boloxnor settled back into his outdoor throne, but something he saw in the village below made his eyes narrow and a dark look clouded his face.

“Empress!” he hollered. A shadowy figure, wearing a black hooded cloak, emerged from the back corner of the terrace, pulling herself from a small cluster of similarly garbed individuals. They each wore a simple gold band around their heads with an abstracted symbol of a beast with horns, engraved in the centre. They were called the Mages of Beelzifrus, with the Empress as their leader and true ruler of the Kingdom.

“Yes my King. How may I serve you?”

“Empress,” Boloxnor began in a gruff voice, “are these pitiful peasants toiling hard enough? Their yield seems to be looking meagre from what I can see.” The wheelbarrows of the workers climbing up the steep hill were loaded with the green and glowing Ornyxium, a gemstone mineral, the same mineral that lay in crushed pile of powder at the King’s left elbow.

“We will consult with the Mining Commanders right away, Your Grace and demand they ramp up production. ‘Dig deeper and dig longer’, as is our motto”. The King grumbled and waved away The Empress, feasting his eyes back on his glittering green powder and going in for another dive. One of the young mages, robed in black, named Lilacent, glanced over at Boloxnor and felt the familiar queasiness and acidic burn of a slow and long-stoked rage. She took a few deep breaths, reaching for the iridescent purple-white opal around her neck. He was a hack pawn, a puppet of the Mages of Beelzifrus, she thought. A seventh son from a warring clan from the far North. He had never mastered warcraft like his brothers and sisters and had been relegated to the position of family treasurer, trying unsuccessfully to learn the arts of accounting upon the orders of his parents, the Clan Chieftain and Chieftaness. He spent most of his time in the local taverns, drinking and causing grave political problems for his family by murdering local townsfolk whenever someone ‘crossed him’, such as looked at him sideways, bumped into him, flirted with someone he had eyes on or won against him at cards. He resented his other siblings viciously, who he was compared to by his parents constantly.

They would say, “Why can’t you be better with an axe like your brother Darthus or nimble with a bow and arrow like your sister Selia? What do you bring to this family?” The Mages of Beelzifrus discovered him in his Northern home village. They observed him for several months before approaching him at his favourite tavern. Just after Boloxnor had finished vomiting out back and re-entered the establishment, plunking himself down at a table, the Empress sat down across from him.

“I see greatness in you.” Boloxnor lifted his head, eyes red and watering. “The rest of these mongrels, including your own family don’t see you like we do, they aren’t capable. They are deficient in vision, unevolved.” Several young and beautiful mages were put before him night after night, to laugh at his jokes, praise him, marvel at his prowess and strength, celebrating his creativity, his intelligence, his handsomeness and his daring. The rest of the tavern patrons soon took notice, especially when the young mages began to give elaborate speeches in tribute of Boloxnor and then pay for everyone’s drinks at the bar. At the end of every night, all the patrons would be chanting his name. Most of them also feared his erratic and impulsive nature and thought joining in the adoration party would decrease their chances of being randomly killed by him.

“We will make you a King! King Boloxnor!” the young beautiful mages chanted breathlessly as they whirled around him seductively, in various states of undress as the drunken euphoria surged. The tavern patrons would press in, gawking, joining in the sweaty, sensational chant.

“Boloxnor for King!!” as they sloppily clanked their mugs of ale together.

In private meetings, after his hangover had worn off, the Empress, with the other mages in attendance, eventually told Boloxnor all about the Earth-bound Beast God they worshipped named Beelzifrus. They said that their God, who was entrapped deep in the centre of the Earth, had communicated the name ‘Boloxnor’ to them and that he was special, the chosen one. They told him he had untapped potential and was the only one that could help them with their ultimate mission, to free Beelzifrus from the Earth. The central tenant of their teachings was that the world needed to be punished and scourged clean for a rebirth to occur and that all humans and other life forms that populated the Earth had become like an overgrowth of bacteria, mould and fungus that was suffocating the planet, preventing purity and cleanliness. Once awoken and freed from his trap, Beelzifrus would make the ultimate sacrifice of eating all this poison, by consuming the entire world. From this filth within the Beast’s belly, the pure seeds, namely the mages and their followers, would emerge and ascend, and be given the life they deserved, endowed with powers, enabling them to keep control of the world and its inhabitants.

The mages pursued a persistent indoctrination program involving rigorous cycles of guilting and shaming with intermittent excessive praise and promise of reward, which eventually converted all the tavern patrons into new recruits. They were then directed to recruit others, especially strong and powerful warriors, of which there was a plentiful supply around who were easily seduced by promises of ultimate power in the next life. And then after one year it was set, the mages had their army. They were ready to head South to pursue their true pursuit, which was to mine an abundance of Ornyxium, the glittery green gemstone that was needed to extract Beelzifrus from the Earth, the only substance in the world that had the necessary properties to jumpstart the Beast’s slumbering heart. The main source of Ornyxium was found in a small peaceful Queendom called Fox’s Glen ruled by Queen Aurelia and her family, a minor but pesky inconvenience to the Mages and the target of their army.

As Lilacent stared in revulsion at Boloxnor, twitching and talking to himself on his terrace throne, she cringed at the memory of being one of those young mages dancing around him all those years ago, letting her hair fall against his face, her laugh twinkle into his ears, her hands and other parts of her brushing against him as she whirled and chanted his cursed name with her other sisters. Those were the days that she was still blind to the evil of the Mages, to the evil of the Empress. Before she had found out they had stolen her from her family as a young child. Before she had found out that she was a witch. Before she found out the Empress had been using her all these years, extracting her essence with a long syringe once per moon cycle and injecting it into herself to stay youthful, a serum of immortality. The Empress had told Lilacent that she had a terrible illness, which was why her family had abandoned her and that this was her treatment. She was told she had too much life force that needed to be drained otherwise it would kill her. She discovered later that the Empress was eight hundred and sixty-seven years old and had been using witches to achieve this state, her only actual power. An old haggard woman had grabbed her wrist one time in a market square where she was sent to buy the weekly provisions. The stranger had pulled her into a dark dusty corner and whispered hoarsely into her ear, that she had been looking for her for a long time, to tell her the truth of who she was. She said the Empress had been preying on her coven for hundreds of years, a coven they had in common, supported by several cycles of Mages. The old woman shared that she herself had once been a Mage, first a witch, also kidnapped, also used and drained of her essence and then discarded. The crone, who claimed to be her Great-Aunt, told her they were subduing her powers, that she had no inkling yet of what she was capable of. Lilacent, fearful, shook the old woman off her, running back to the Mages without provisions. But the seed had been planted. Lilacent began to experiment with her powers over the next few years, and made discoveries of her abilities such as telekinesis, telepathy, potions, spells and charms. She began to use her charms against the Empress to dodge the draining of her essence which had to be at a very specific phase of the moon. And then came the massacre of the royal family of Fox’s Glen and the subjugation and enslavement of its people and she knew in her bones, without a shred of doubt that the Empress was truly evil and had warped the mind of all who followed her.

Lilacent recoiled as the images flooded her mind. Queen Aurelia, her throat slit and bleeding out on her bed, eyes wide and her husband, Prince Ellersmor lying at the base of the wooden staircase with arms, legs, wrists and neck bent in horrible unnatural positions. And the children! The five children of the humble forest castle, tied together in a chamber and gassed to death. But one child, the youngest was able to wriggle free of the ropes, a toddler with newfound powers of locomotion and determined to use them. Just as the door to the chamber had been closed and the Mage in charge of the execution went to the adjoining room to turn on the gas valve that had been hastily rigged in the panic and turmoil, Lilacent opened the door and scooped up the sobbing infant and ran. She had left the door flung open wide but sadly the other Mage had come back and closed it firmly, confused as to how it had swung open. Lilacent hid the infant under her cloak, able to slip away into the forest in all the commotion, as the Northern army was finishing up its battle with the meagre defence of Fox’s Glen, a peaceful nation that had more in common with the faeries that populated its vast surrounding forest than the warring clans from the North.

***

The boy in the forest who had followed that faerie dragon now stood at five foot eleven, seventeen years of age, long gold locks shining in the sun, clothing made of delicately woven plant fibres, his lean figure muscled from years of hard work contributing to his family. He was a proud member of a faerie community and helped out in many ways such as building, foraging and cooking. He had been given the name of Wolfson as he had been a ward of a Wolf clan in the thick brambly Eastern region of the Forest, not only learning the language of the wolves and making many friends, but negotiating a treaty between the faeries and the wolves involving the exchange of magical goods for protection of their fae territories from humans. Wolfson learned the ways of the faerie such as the medicinal use of plants and healing arts as well as magical skills such as photokinesis, telekinesis and oneirokinesis (travelling into the dreams of others). His favourite skill was shape-shifting into both plants and animals. He loved the feeling of opening his eyes as something different; a mushroom, a tree, water from the stream, a bird or a wolf. In this art, he had spent several hours a day since infancy, engaging the discipline and determination necessary to learn a craft that did not come naturally to his species. He had to his advantage that he did not know he was human. He didn’t see himself as different from his family, which helped him believe in his ability to acquire and hone these magical skills. He noticed a difference in his appearance, but there were all kinds of differences among the faeries he lived with. Some could fly, some had long noses, some had pointed ears, some had sharp fangs, some were beautiful, some were cranky, some were joyous, some spent most of their time shape shifting into other beings. Some were dragons, like his best friend, Noimir, the tiny fae dragon that had found him in the woods all those years ago. Noimir the Brave, Noimir the Curious, Noimir the Wild. Wolfson called him all these things, depending on what crazy stunts Noimir was up to that day. Wolfson slept beside his friend’s bed of burning coals every night. They travelled through each other’s dreams, continuing the play of the day long into their sleeping hours. Occasionally Wolfson had nightmares, visions of murder and death, blood spilling from people he felt close to but that he didn’t recognize. Not just close, but painfully attached. Noimir would sit close to him in these dreams, whispering soothing sounds into his ears, trying to shield his eyes sometimes by flitting around in front on his face. Wolfson woke up crying from these dreams. Noimir would rise from his bed of coals and nuzzle in close to Wolfson’s face, the heat emanating from his body evaporating the tears pooling on his friend’s cheeks.

Sometimes Wolfson’s dreams took him to the Kingdom that began at the edge of the forest. As he hovered over the haggard-looking citizens, toiling under relentless pressure and abuse, he felt a deep concern. In his waking hours, he could sometimes hear the clank of iron tools emanating from within the deep mine. He could hear the sound of whips cracking and the cruel, coarse shouts of the grotesque individuals in power. He had raised his concerns at the campfires before. The Elders shared concerns over a dark rumbling within the Earth they had felt, like an evil and ancient power stirring, turning in its sleep, becoming restless.

Lilacent sat at a table in the corner of her room, distractedly lifting her tea cup and saucer in the air with her mind, willing them to bob around before her in little dancing motions. She hummed a tune, mesmerized. Suddenly the door swung open and the tea cup and saucer dropped to the table, shattering. She glanced furtively at the door, hoping whoever it was hadn’t seen what she was doing.

“There’s no use hiding it any more Lilacent. Your treachery, disloyalty and dishonesty is common knowledge to us all,” said the Empress, as she strode over to the table. Lilacent noticed several guards outside the door, causing her heart to race. The Empress held up her hands in front of Lilacent’s face, so close that she could see the wrinkles, bulging blue veins and brownish age spots. “Look at my hands! Look what you’ve done! I know you’ve been avoiding me and using treacherous sorcery to distract me. It was a privilege to bring me youth and vitality, to your master, the one who has cared for you all these years. Don’t you get it, you ungrateful twit? And for what, so you could make some teacups float in the air? Do you know what you’ve chosen for yourself now? You have no chance of ascension. And we are almost ready. In a matter of days, Beelzifrus will receive his sacred infusion of Ornyxium.” Lilacent stared up at the Empress, her quickening heart beat added to by a dull thudding in her temples and a terrible feeling in her guts. She felt about five years old getting scolded, instead of the woman of thirty-four years that she was. The Empress picked up a broken shard of the tea cup, grabbed Lilacent by the hair and pressed the shard to her neck. “I should just kill you right now.” Lilacent squeezed her eyes tight shut against the pain, unable to breathe. She heard the shard drop to the floor with a clatter. “But I need you for just a little while longer,” she heard the Empress grumble to herself. “Guards!” the Empress beckoned to the armed soldiers waiting outside the door. “Seize her!” Lilacent tried to resist and managed to knock the Empress off her feet with her mind’s will but the guards grabbed her and chained to a large flat wooden slab before she could conjure anything else. They dropped the plank that she was shackled to by wrists, ankles and neck onto a large trolley and wheeled her out. She wasn’t used to using her new found magical powers under such duress, they required focus and attention, so she was powerless to resist. She was thrown into a cell, still shackled to the plank and left alone for days.

Wolfson woke up with a start, sweat beading on his forehead. “Noimir…Noimir! I saw her. The woman from the forest…the day that I met you…with the opal pendant. I’ve seen her before in dreams but I didn’t recognize who she was until now.” Noimir opened one eye, snug in his bed of burning embers. He lifted his head and coughed out a little fireball, unfolding his iridescent purple and turquoise wings and sitting up to listen to his friend. “She said she had an urgent message for me, that the fate of the world depended on…me. That it’s finally time to reclaim my throne…my throne Noimir! And that she needs my help. I was in a dungeon with her and someone in a black cloak was stealing her essence, her life force. And beating her while she was chained to a plank. Who is she Noimir? And I saw the beast, the one that the Council of Elders has been sensing. I saw his eyes glowing green, his putrid, matted hair and sharp teeth the size of giant trees. And worst of all, I felt his hunger. He means to eat the whole world and he is almost awake. I must go to the Council of Elders now, to tell them what I have seen.”

The Mages gathered around a deep pit. It was so deep that the flames and molten lava leapt up from the centre of the Earth itself. Corpses and skeletons clutching axes and shovels could be seen in layers of the dirt spiralling down, evidence of the brutal working conditions imposed upon the diggers of this horrendous chasm. The sound of the Mages’ chanting filled the sky; a deep, rapid and repetitive chant in an ancient language, gradually increasing in intensity and speed. A long funnel carried glowing green and liquified Ornyxium down into the pit in a steady stream, pumped from a massive storage basin on wheels. The glowing green liquid splashed and mixed with the bubbling lava deep below. Boloxnor’s Northern Army stood behind the Mages fanned out in a circular formation. Boloxnor himself sat on a makeshift throne that he had been carried out on, near to the pit’s edge, half asleep, his head bobbing, weaving in and out of consciousness. A deep and terrible snarling growl began to rise up the pit, the force of it causing some of the Mages to lose their footing a bit. The walls of the pit began to shake and tremble.

Just as a long set of claws could be seen scratching up and through the mix of sparking red lava and green Ornyxium, a blast of light momentarily blinded Mages and soldiers alike. A horde of faery fighters descended on the assembled. Some in their original tiny winged forms and some shape-shifted into the form of humans with pointed and gracefully arced ears with glowing skin, running full speed into the fray of soldiers. They wore golden armour and brandished swords, bow and arrows and spears. The tiny flying faeries blasted light from their fingertips which eviscerated into a red mist anyone who it touched. The humanoid faeries spilled blood and pierced hearts in a blinding blur. And then came the faery dragons, their wings beating so fiercely, a deafening buzz filled the air. When they unleashed their fire all as one, it tore a deadly swath through the group of soldiers. People on fire ran screaming in all directions. Soldiers fumbled for their weapons and began to slash and strike back. Mages crept closer to the edge of the pit, with nowhere else to run.

Suddenly a wolf’s howl pierced the night air. He stood tall and fierce on an embankment, looking down at the chaos, eyes the colour of cobalt narrowing, silver fur sparkling in the moonlight, a steady growl following the howl. For a few moments, time seemed to stop and all eyes were upon him. His first action was to leap towards the Ornyxium vessel, still half full, upsetting the whole apparatus and system. His second action was to leap towards the tottering and panicked King Boloxnor, ripping off his head in one swift motion, a blur of teeth, snarls and blood. Then he leapt towards the Empress, who stood at the rim of the pit, face the colour of chalk and ripped off her head as well. The head, wearing an expression of shock and indignation tumbled into the pit below, while Boloxnor’s, with its tongue lolling out and eyes rolled back, lay in a pool of glowing and bubbling Ornyxium on the ground. The wolf jumped to the ground, its fur covered in blood and green goo and gave one last fearsome snarl. At that the soldiers and Mages all scattered, running off into the night, screaming. The faeries and faery dragons, as well as Wolfson in his fierce wolf form banded together, using their powers of telekinesis to push earth from the ground around them to fill in the entire pit. One last tremor rose up from deep within the Earth before there was silence. The true heir to the throne of Fox’s Glen looked out into the distance and saw the shadowy figures of his subjects approaching him with curiosity and hope.

Wolfson found Lilacent imprisoned and in a weakened state; starved, beaten and drained of her essence. He helped nurse her back to health, and once her physical well being had been restored, she joined the outdoor clinic he had set up for the citizens of Fox’s Glen. Lilacent spent much of her days practicing her physical and emotional healing arts on the people of Fox’s Glen who had been severely abused and traumatized all these years, but who’s spirits had been greatly lifted by the presence of their true King, the little golden-haired boy always at Queen Aurelia’s side who they had loved so dearly, who was now a man of twenty. They had taken to him right away, surrounding him as he sat in the grass among them, picnicking and telling stories. Many townsfolk shared recollections of his family, of his mother and father, brothers and sisters. Wolfson both wept in grief and laughed at the delightful stories, finally getting to know something about his original family that he knew so little of. He told them stories of his faery family which captivated the people. Some of the elders told of a time long, long ago, accounts passed down from their great-great grandparents, where the fae lived among the people of Fox’s Glen, and they helped each other in many ways. While the faeries had mostly returned to their home in the forest, kissing Wolfson’s forehead and cheeks and bidding him to return and visit often, Noimir stayed in Fox’s Glen with his best friend, delighting the children who would run and play with him for hours, flapping their arms and trying to fly like the faery dragon. And when not in the clinic, tending to the people, Lilacent could be found discovering and practicing her many magical gifts, making plates dance in the air, talking with trees or soaring high into the sky to dance in the puffy white clouds high above.