Teleonomy

In the fifth year of the reign of Asa, king of Judah, there were great portents in the sky and upon the Earth. The priests became blind to the future and the torches outside the temples burnt out, the offerings left upon the altar fell sideways in their death and struggled too much beneath the knife. The wise prophet Azariah, son of Oded, told Asa that there was discontent in the heavens and that the Lord had decreed unto the world that there should be plague and famine, but the cattle remained healthy and the crops did not die, though their yield was only seventy thousand bails that year. Asa ordered that Azariah be stripped of his rank, but the prophet came before him, pulling at his hair, and said unto him that there was strife in heaven and that the signs were not of the Lord's anger but of preparation for a war among the Hosts.

Asa asked of Azariah wherefore such a battle should occur, when Satan was chained in Gehenna to the lake of fire and the fallen angels strode no more upon the lands, having been cast out by the Lord and secured within the accursed lake to never rise again, their glories thrown aside and watched over by ten hundred angels with keys and swords that were made from lightning and flame. He answered that this battle did not come from within the holy spheres but from without, and that great evil, foreign to the heavens and the Earth and all things set upon the firmament, approached.

The king believed the words of Azariah, for he loved him greatly and knew of his piety, and he sent messengers to the kings of Aegypt, Israel and of Aram, Zerah son of Zozerak, Baasha son of Ahijah, and Ben-Hadad son of Tabrimmon. They returned with word that their prophets told of similiar omens and that they were greatly distressed by the matter. Asa sent out his envoys again and requested that they all meet in Jerusalem to decide on how to react, but they instead convened in Nablus. Only king Asa came in person, but dignitaries from the other states were there.

Just as the meeting began, a great number of four-winged angels, that shone with a great light, descended upon the hall. They wore black robes and carried axes of silver and axes of gold, and were led by tall Sandaphon, who brings men together and sings the heavenly songs of the Almighty, who constantly battles Satan to prevent division amongst brothers and sons. He came before them and told them of a message from on high- that heaven was to be attacked, and that it was not a threat from the angels of the evil one but from outside the spheres of the stars and planets, from beyond the space and time of creation. Asa wept at this and asked of the mighty angel what he should do. Sandaphon answered that they must find allies and gather an army from the whole of the world, from scalding Aethiopia in the South and from the tall, savage, bearded men of the cold North, and from the riders of the East and the helmetted warriors of the warm North, and from the great empire of the furthest East who had never heard of the almighty, and from the builders of stepped temples on the jungled land of the furthest West.

The king responded that this was impossible, and that these men would never listen, but Sandaphon rebuked him and told him that angels would go before and spread the word that his entreaties might fall upon keener ears. He also granted their messengers a favourable wind that they might go faster to their allies. The assembly rode out to their homelands, and the men of Aram, Aegypt and Israel told their kings of the story, and whole support was pledged to the cause. For their leader they chose Asa, who had been present when the angels had come down.

Azhurna, king of the great Assyrian empire of the East that had subdued the kings of Babylon and Persia, sent a message that his vast army should help the alliance as long as Asa handed over the command of the federation to him. For three days Asa saught the advice of his councils and the other kings, and finally he relented and gave Azhurna power over all the armies. They assembled by the green Euphrates, in a camp a dozen miles wide, with supplies coming from far Galilee and Jerusalem. Cities were abandoned and their merchants and farmers sent to help sustain the great force that was now present there.

From distant Europa came tribes of men who built great rings of stone and had only just set aside their local gods for the Lord after his angels had come among them. They had great swords and hair of yellow or red, but did not favour the warmth of the encampment and set up their own several miles upriver, in the mountains. They swore fealty to Azhurna as the other soldiers but remained rebellious. After them came the men from the North-East steppes, where plants refuse to grow, who ride horses with unmatched skill and live on the move without villages or cities. Their numbers were great and their chieftains agreed to serve under the alliance.

Their army grew for the rest of the year, with the regent of the Zhou in the furthest East sending a force of men to join the fight who had strange swords and armour and carried flags with unreadable letters, and also came the chariots of the Mykenaa, with helmets of boar-tusks and long bronze spears. They were fierce warriors, but few in number.

When the force was thus assembled, Azhurna received word of strange happenings in the southern Arab gulf, and came down to find the strangest creatures. They were more like vegetable than animal, with five tentacles and no eyes, and were not killed by arrows of spears. With them came shapeless things that would carry their possessions and had built their cities, and seemed unkillable. They quickly learnt to write in the symbols of the Assyrians and Azhurna learnt that they had come from the depths of the sea to help the battle against the beings from outside the stars. Their numbers were few, and they had been sleeping far under the Earth, but they were hard to kill and their formless servants could match a thousand soldiers. The other kings and generals did not trust these things but allowed them to join the alliance.

He then heard news of the ocean boiling in the west, and an impossible city of black stone where up became down and men fell in strange ways rising from beneath the sea. The plant-like men said that this was the city of the great monsters who had Trod upon the Earth long ago, and Trod there still, but were not seen as they were sleeping, dead, within the city where their high priest lay beneath the spire. Idols of foul monsters fell from the sky, and cults grew around them which sailed to the city and began to worship the beings within.

Azhurna sent five ships of sixty heroes, clad in the finest armour and holding weapons from the Zhou of the East, to the city to bring back the cults and kill the beasts. For three months he awaited their return but they did not come and he was greatly disturbed to hear that their ships had been broken by beasts as tall as mountains that walked in the seas, with faces that made men fall insane upon seeing them, and bore unspeakable wings and tails. Their starspawn filled the beaches in their tens of thousands, killing and eating all they saw.

The alliance sent a large army, of two hundred thousand men, to fight the beasts as they filled the southern sea. They were driven back, and lost fifty thousand men to the monsters or to madness, as they said one of the old ones had arisen from the sea and looked down upon them. But then a host of six-winged seraphim came from the sky and killed the starspawn with their swords, then fell upon the old one and forced it back into the depths below.

Images of insanity crippled the ground and the sky, and the moon turned black, and crops stopped growing. Children were born with tentacles and evil eyes, and animals covered in spines and teeth prowled the wilderness, roaring like animals should never do, vicious and horrifying. The plant-men from the sea held off the starspawn with strange magics and their servants, but the numbers of the enemy rose each day. Fungoid beasts from the distant rocks of Yuggoth and Margr'k, whose empire spanned a heaven and an earth beyond the sight of the angels, descended from the sky and took men into their outposts. There, they played with their minds and made them believe that the fungoids were not beasts but great, and attacked the alliance whenever they could, sabotaging the supplies of the armies and razing fields. Many soldiers died of hunger and in their raids, so the alliance was forced to spread out, with the men of Europa heading into the mountains and those of the Levant moving west to Galilee.