by August Arrea
“An entire class of Nephilim wiped out in the time it takes to blink without so much as breaking a sweat,” Damiel remarked with casual observation before removing his foot from the boy struggling beneath him. “I see I have much work ahead of me.”
~~~
He took a spot in the center in the arena and, with a discerning eye, watched as the group climbed back to its feet.
“Lesson number one,” he barked. “Never let down your guard! Like a bird perched on a fence you risk the shredding from a cat’s claws if you relax any one of your gifted senses for even a moment. As Nephilim, you will find the civilian world when you return to it a much darker and crueller place than you remember leaving. That is only because you will begin to see things of which before you were blind. From this moment forward, everything your eyes fall upon around you must be viewed first as a threat. I am a threat, the trees are a threat, the very stones of this arena surrounding you are a threat.”
Damiel watched as the gazes shifted questionably to the massive slabs of rock. They were listening.
“Lesson number two,” he then continued. “You have all failed lesson number one! But do not fret. I am here to ensure it does not again happen. It is my job to see to it that when the day comes for you to leave the jaws of Lions Bite for the last time, it will not be as the boys who first entered it, but as the fighting warriors you are destined to become. Of that, I assure you.”
Not that any of the boys were in need of assurances. If anyone was up to the task of such a proclamation, it was Damiel. To be anywhere near where his shadow happened to rest was to witness firsthand the power and might of Heaven’s arsenal. Towering in size and sculpted with strength, there was no question how it was he became known as the Angel of the Sword; but he was far from impregnable, and the scars which marked him were not carried on his flesh but treaded the golden pools of his eyes in the form of ghostly reflections from countless wars and battles both celestial and earth-grounded. It was the one thing which brought to his otherwise youthful face a deep well of age whose hand reached far past the accumulation of time recorded in years. Jacob was not alone in pondering what untold tales could be dredged from such a well-lived vessel.
“I hear we’ll be learning how to fight with swords,” said one of the boys, stirring a chattering of excitement from the others.
The eagerness brimming noticeably from the Nephilim standing before him made Damiel smile. “In due time. For now, you cannot expect to feast on solids when you have yet to teethe.”
If there was any confusion as to what Damiel meant—and from the looks on the boys’ faces there undoubtedly was—an explanation in the making arrived when the angel led the group out of the arena and into the thick of the nearby Forest.
“Here’s where you’ll cut your first tooth,” he said once they were amongst the towering trees. “Don’t expect it to be pleasant.”
Whatever “it” referred to was quickly introduced to the group of Shrikes. For the next several days the woods adjacent Lions Bite became a place of basic training for the Nephilim. There Damiel put his students through the paces, running them hard and relentlessly for great distances that seemed to never have an ending point. For many of the boys, it was a shock to the system trying to keep up, but their pleas for rest fell on unsympathetic ears. Damiel proved himself in short order to be nothing less than a militant taskmaster, drilling hard his unseasoned platoons through the woods which he had fashioned into a punishing obstacle course. Strained, cursing cries echoed loudly from the thicket silencing even the birds watching curiously from their perches high up in the trees as the Nephilim were pushed to their physical limits.
Like many their age, the boys were deceptively soft and out of shape despite whatever athletic appearance they revealed outwardly to the rest of the world. Their bodies cramped and screamed in pain, the result of stagnant, untapped movement of muscle suddenly given a rude and unwelcome jolt to awaken. It was the will and perseverance of the fatigued boys, however, that became the focus of Damiel’s strenuous conditioning, and it wasn’t long before the cobwebs were dusted away and the torturous exertions became less painful to endure. Little by little, day by day, the grueling regimen became less toilsome. The cramps faded. Bodies no longer doubled over in their dire need for breath, and in some cases the need to vomit. All the while, sweat continued to bleed from pores, soaking its way through T-shirts and leaving a hard-earned sheen on straining bodies performing what would soon be demonstrated in unison as unimaginable feats.
For Jacob, it wasn’t like before he came to Eden when sporadic moments of self-discovery revealed he could do things other boys could not. Suddenly, what was once thought humanely impossible was now possible, without question or skepticism. What was happening was real. It was as if he had found a footing that had long been elusive to his feet. And with Damiel’s taxing guidance, Jacob found himself racing with great speed across terrain not meant for humankind to tread upon even under the most careful of circumstances. He along with the other Shrikes began to move with an unusual grace through the Forest in a range of movements that as far as they knew belonged exclusively to the Forest creatures who lived there. The swiftness with which they ran, the ease with which they scaled trees and the distance they managed to leap from ever-growing heights, even the way their eyes viewed things; it was as if the Forest itself had somehow spawned a new species of human.
In truth there was nothing new about their species. Theirs was a lineage which reached back to the earliest times of creation long shrugged off as nothing more than a mythical blemish in the footnotes of human existence. Each had been given birth to and handed swaddled into their mothers’ arms only a stretch of memory ago. Now, as they stood on the cusp of manhood, the panting sounds of labor once more echoed from deep inside Eden’s forests. It was here in Eden’s care, in a world hidden within a world, where they would truly be born. And like an expectant father wearing a trail into the floor beneath his feet, Damiel watched with growing pride as the band of halflings, with each passing day, began to come into their own until one day a look of satisfaction slowly emerged from behind his often-stony expression in the form of a smug smile, and he exclaimed with confidence, “Now you’re ready to learn how to fight!”
~~~
While Damiel would spend the coming days, weeks and months strengthening the Nephilim’ bodies and fighting capabilities, just as Zuriel continued to work patiently in helping unlock the secrets of and wielding the Graces given them, the task of sharpening the boys’ minds was left in Thaniel’s hands. And rightly so.
All the Guides held rein to a vast wealth of knowledge, but one only had to speak a short amount of time with Thaniel to realize his intellect stretched far beyond the normal boundaries, even amongst angels. And like most top minds of the flesh-and-blood variety where intelligence is known to separate, and even isolate one—in some ways, cruelly—from their peers, there was something oddly unique about Thaniel that made him seem somewhat out of place amongst the other Guides.
It wasn’t the fact he was slightly less in stature than the other
Guides, or that he was the only one amongst them who kept his loosely coiled blond locks trimmed short. What left him mildly askew from his winged brethren was far more subtle than anything his physicality made evident. It could be seen in his face; or rather not seen. His notable beauty and youthfulness flourished in great abundance like a flowering vine. And like a vine blotting from view the wall to which it clings, the hard, sometimes even cold veneer shared amongst the other angels, if even but a glimmer, was absent Thaniel. Where the other Guides, just as youthful and beautiful in their own right, were equal parts rose and thorn, Thaniel seemed to encompass only the brightness of a newly budding flower, untouched by the ravages of an aged war against unimaginable dark enemies.
It was such a presence the boys found waiting outside the Library’s massive wooden arched doors the first day the Shrikes were to begin their instruction—or Study as it became
more commonly known to them. Despite a night of rest in which they slept as soundly as if death itself had taken them on a short excursion, the approaching group of boys was a familiar sight to Thaniel, who watched with some hilarity as their lumbered steps and pained looks straining their faces spoke of the toll their introduction to Lions Bite the day before had left on their now sore, stiff bodies.
“I won’t pretend being cooped up in a library surrounded by books and hearing the drone of my voice as I lecture compares much with the more rough and tumble activities you’ve partaken in at Lions Bite, or the fanciful lessons you’ve been introduced to at the Crescent Scar,” said Thaniel while slowly and purposefully scanning the worn, haggard looks staring blankly back at him. “Although I think it’s safe to assume from the looks on each of your faces you might actually welcome the seats waiting for you inside and whatever temporary respite they might provide for your obvious aches and pains. Damiel never was one to wade his way into the water so much as to dive in head first; both in being and in his teaching methods. Thankfully, I can assume he left untaxed for me the one body part I will require from each of you today: your brain.”
Thaniel then turned and led the way inside the Library, and the Nephilim slowly filed in behind him with the resistant gaits of inmates forced to follow the warden to their waiting cells. Their dour looks, however, weren’t long-lasting. They had managed less than a dozen steps inside when there came from the boys a succession of astonished gasps and whispered mutterings of awe. Thaniel didn’t need to glance back over his shoulder to know the unenthusiastic scowls the boys carried with them had instantly receded from their faces and been replaced with dumbstruck wonder just as it happened to all Nephilim who stepped foot inside the Library for the first time. That was because the Library was unlike any other seen before in all the world over.
It consisted of one single, large room, long and narrow in shape and grand in its space. Spiral staircases at each end sprouted from the floor leading the way upward to numerous balconies and landings circling the perimeter of the Library’s countless upper floors. Like everything else at Havenhid, the Library was a living creation; its architecture the result of an elaborate and completely inexplicable coming together of arborescent limbs and boughs from the trees inside which it resided. Yet as impressive as it all was, it wasn’t the binding and braiding and weaving together of the branches which came to shape such a colossal structure that held the boys’ awe, but the walls themselves. They were stuffed with books—far too many to even begin counting—and the eyes marveling at the sight followed these book-filled walls upward where they seemed to stretch beyond any ending within sight from where the boys stood staring with their mouths unhinged.
“How many do you think there are?” questioned Jacob quietly in disbelief while his nose took note of the pungent scent of musky, aged paper in the air, and he couldn’t help wondering if this was the place all ancient books went when they died.
“Hundreds,” answered Ethan equally transfixed.
“Take a math class,” Kairo sniped. “We’re talking thousands. Tens of thousands!”
“Anyone care to venture a bet it’s in the millions?” challenged Max.
Millions. The idea, itself, was mind-boggling. Especially to Ethan who before wouldn’t have believed there were even that many different books in existence, much less a single place with enough shelf space to house them all. Browsing a row of books cramming a nearby wall, he gently fingered the noticeable age which frayed some of the bindings. The spines of many of the books held no markings or words of any kind. Yet one thing was clear just by looking at them; the books filling the shelves were not like the ones at the public library back home. Here, there was no place for fluff or light-hearted fare; no tales of wizards or vampires or fellowships of any kind. One did not need to crack open a book at random to know the pages inside held the kind of writings capable of only one thing—making the brain swell and ache from the heft of the meanings weighting each string of words which filled them.
“Weird isn’t it?” Ethan muttered aloud, though more to himself than to anyone within earshot.
“What’s that?” asked Jacob as he wandered nearby.
“That something like this would exist here of all places.”
Jacob wasn’t sure what Ethan meant at first. Sure the Library was an awesome, spectacular sight, but, after growing accustomed to Eden and seeing all they had seen, such grand spectacles weren’t all that unusual anymore.
“So many books,” said Ethan, looking upward in a straining effort to find an end to the book-filled walls surrounding them. “And I bet you anything not a ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Twilight’ among them.”
“That’s what has you stupefied?” said Leos with a chuckle. “The fact there doesn’t seem to be a teen fiction section?”
Ethan ignored the sarcastic quip. “Don’t you find it just a bit strange that there’s this library filled with what looks to be every single important book known to man smack dab in Eden? And yet the first two people to ever live here were thrown out of the Garden as punishment because the fruit they ate from the Tree of Life filled their head with knowledge.”
The question passed without remark amongst the boys. Not because it was ignored as many of Ethan’s inane comments tended to be. Indeed, quite the opposite. For the first time, Ethan had managed to stump everyone with a legitimate and thought-provoking puzzler.
“An astute observation Mr. Richert. Already you are showing you just might possess the perceptive intellect required to do well in the lessons taught here,” Thaniel, who was standing nearby listening to the conversations being bandied about by the group of boys, was heard to say.
Ethan couldn’t help but shoot a smug look of validation at his roommates, particularly Leos.
“However, I must correct you on one point,” Thaniel was quick to add. “Neither Adam nor Eve were banished from Eden because a sense of awareness and reasoning was visited upon them. Rather it was due to their disobeying the sole directive placed on them from the very beginning not to eat of the fruit of the Tree. That willful action led to their downfall, not the gift of knowledge. And before you question me further, no, your ears did not mishear my words. The breadth of knowledge is and always has been God’s gift to every thinking creature. Despite a long-held belief by many that God denied his first human creations the ability of rational thinking to ensure they remain less than he, I can assure you nothing is further from the truth. Like all things, it was out of a sense of love that a blank void was created which knowledge could not penetrate. Because with knowledge comes a sense of right and wrong. And the shadow of sin has an encroaching habit to lay in wait where thoughts, however pure or innocent, tend to flourish.”
“So you’re saying,” began Jacob as he along with the others pondered what Thaniel had told them, “it was out of protection that man was first denied ‘the breadth of knowledge,’ as you call it.”
“That is correct.”
“Then forgive me if this comes across as a stupid question, but why if knowledge leads to sin are we standing in a place filled with books to fill our brains even more than they are?”
It was with a sense of relief that Jacob saw a somewhat kindly expression in Thaniel’s face when the angel looked to him and not in the noticeably contemptible manner the other Guides—most notably Zuriel and Eksel—had when holding the boy in the crosshairs of their gaze.
“There are no stupid questions here, just as there are no stupid answers,” said Thaniel with a pleasant, tight-lipped smile. It pleased him to know his students’ minds were already turning like the gears of a clock in an eager curiosity to dissect and even challenge his own words. And yet instead of offering an answer to Jacob’s probing question, Thaniel suddenly turned and instructed the group to walk with him.
~~~
The boys followed, trailing behind in a tight cluster. The patter of their footsteps across the unique parquet-like floor, like the drumming of a slow rain bea
ting heavily against a rooftop, echoed off the silence hanging over them. They crossed the very center of the Library where surprisingly—or maybe not so surprisingly—they came upon a large tree. In fact, it was a wayward bough which had long ago broken ranks from the Library’s massive architecture of branches and come up through the floor where it took permanent root, as well as the shape of a large tree, Thaniel explained. Beneath its cover of lush leaves and blossoming flowers was a raised, circular platform, and residing upon the platform equidistance across from one another were four very large books. They stood no less than four feet in height and rested on sturdy wood easels.
“Whoa, you gotta come see this,” a boy named Koji called out to the other boys after straying from the group to investigate the scratching sound of writing coming from the books.
The others looked to Thaniel and when it was clear he would not squelch their curiosity, they bolted in unison to the platform where Koji was standing. It didn’t take long to see what had wowed their classmate once they had jockeyed for position close around where Koji stood.
“Check it out…it’s writing itself!” Koji exclaimed while pointing to the book in front of him.
It would have been easy to laugh off such a ridiculous claim. Easy, that is, if it weren’t immediately proven to be true. Sure enough, right before their eyes, the boys watched incredulously as words handwritten in black ink bled onto the blank page letter by letter as though written by some invisible pen. They watched without so much as a murmur to one another and before long their collective look of disbelief faded under the weight of frowns as they began reading in earnest the magically appearing words.
“What’s it writing?” asked a ruddy-cheeked boy named Roderick, but whom the other boys favored calling Red due to his shocking red mop of curly hair.
