by August Arrea
Vanished.
Disappeared.
All in an instant.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Max also sprawled out face-down on the ground. The tail he had been hugging for dear life had also dematerialized. Jacob then looked to the black bag grasped in the tight clutches of his fingers and he could see it was not empty. Climbing to his knees with his face dripping with sweat and smudged with dirt and soot, he held up the sack while cautiously keeping it at an arm’s length distance. It bulged and squirmed with some living thing and at first he questioned what it could possibly be, though he dared not peek inside to find out. And then, from inside he heard a familiar quiet clucking coo.
It was the Illume.
~~~
Upon their return to Havenhid, none of the five shell-shocked boys carried the expected glee of victory as they stood beneath the great arched doorway leading to the Hall of the Light where they found their classmates and fathers gathered beneath a constellation of soft firelight patiently awaiting the group’s return.
“There you are. Come forward, if you will,” Anahel’s voice echoed enthusiastically through the great Hall at the sight of the returning competitors.
Looking haggard and worn from a long day that had tasked in good measure their endurance and strength both physically and mentally, the five boys made their way with unhurried and somewhat pained steps down an aisle formed by a gradual parting of the way by those assembled in the Hall. Jacob gave a casual glance around, his face dirt-smudged and singed from the Illume’s fiery breath, and through the sea of expectant faces he passed he found the welcoming sight of Gotham standing amongst them. Gotham offered a faint smile and nod and it pleased Jacob to see the angel had stayed true to his word and awaited his return. Standing at the front of the room was Anahel looking august and noble as ever in white. He was flanked from behind by the Guides: Zuriel and Thaniel on one side and Eksel and Damiel on the other.
“I’m unsure whether the notable lack of excitement exuding from each of you means you were unsuccessful in your quest, or that you have surrendered yourselves to the clutches of fatigue,” Anahel, motioning the boys forward to line themselves before him, wondered aloud. “Have all of you returned to Havenhid with empty sacks? Or does one amongst you carry inside it the Illume?”
No one answered at first, and then Jacob stepped forward. “One does,” he replied.
He held out his black sack which squirmed about in his grip and Anahel, who had secretly hoped for the revealed outcome, did the best he could to keep the corners of his mouth from curling upward in a pleased manner as he took the sack from Jacob. What followed next was a collective holding of breath by Jacob and the other four boys when Anahel gently reached inside the sack and removed from it a furious fluttering of wings. Yet upon looking into the face of the angel in whose grip it was held and the intense look coming from the golden eyes greeting it, the Illume instantly grew calm and settled.
“A rare pearl hidden inside the lustered shell that is Eden, if ever there was one,” Anahel voiced softly. “I can recall the small number of times I have been gifted to look upon the beauty of this creature, and it gives me great pleasure to do so once more.”
He then held his hand up so all the eyes straining for a glimpse of the mythic bird could see it. Beneath the moonlit-filled night filtering down through the canopy of branches that shaped the ceiling which on this night remained unfolded to the darkness outside, the Illume’s feathers gleamed with the sheen of a rippling iridescence bringing forth a wave of admiring coos from those who looked upon it. All, that is, except Jacob, Max, Creed, Issac and Michael who still carried with them the fresh memory of the fire-breathing beast that somehow resided within the deceptive hide of the delicate and beautiful creation now before them. Their guarded gazes moved as one, following the Illume sitting tame and without any sign of threat—or ability to breath forth an inferno—on Anahel’s hand as it was set on a nearby waiting perch.
“By the looks of you, I take it the quest to capture the Illume was not as easy a task as you presumed it would be,” said Anahel, turning his attention back to the boys, and more precisely Creed. “An unusual creature, the Illume. As wondrous as it is inscrutable. And, despite what you might have seen today in your pursuit of it, quite friendly, once it gets to know you. If its existence serves to prove anything, it is that nothing is as it first appears.”
“You could bloody well say that again!” Jacob heard Max utter under his breath.
“To you Jacob, I say a job well done,” continued Anahel. “By facing the heat of the Illume’s breath—without wings, I might add—you have shown a commendable strength of courage that resides inside you.”
The angel’s encouraging words warmed Jacob, even as he felt Creed’s eyes fixed contemptibly on him.
“Thank you,” said Jacob. “But I can’t take full credit for capturing the Illume.”
Anahel turned a quizzical look on the boy. “Oh?”
“Max here is just as responsible, if not more. It was he who faced down the Illume and dodged its flames.”
Anahel’s gaze fell onto Max. “This is true?”
“You can say I’ll never look at snags on the barbie the same way after today, but yes,” answered Max. “It was Jacob, though, who actually jumped on the back of the Illume and managed to get the sack over its head. Nearly got turned into a shish kebab for the trouble, I might add.”
“I see,” said Anahel, his studying gaze shifting between the two boys before him. “This would be the first time I’ve seen any Fledglings work together instead of fiercely battling one another in pursuit of the Illume. And now, instead of insisting your own rightful claim to the prestigious victory that its capture brings, you choose to argue a case in favor of the other’s heroic role.”
Anahel stood quietly for a moment staring down at the two boys and before long a smile broke his stoic look. “Suddenly, the stunning presence of the Illume in this great Hall is momentarily dimmed, and rightly so.”
He turned his back on the boys and crossed to where the luminous bird rested quietly on its perch. A curious silence settled itself upon the room as Anahel brought a hand to the exotic headdress of feathers sprouting from the Illume’s head. Anahel took hold of the vibrant solitary blue feather nestled in the center of the crown of white plumes and gave it a gentle pluck. The Illume squawked calmly but didn’t seem to mind surrendering the quill, the end from which held a brilliant blue flame. Anahel then walked the feather with its flaming tip back to where the five boys stood and instructed Max to hold out his right arm with the inside of his wrist turned upward. Max did as he was told. If he was nervous about what was to come next, he did well in veiling it, especially as he watched the fiery feather make its way closer to his exposed skin. Jacob felt his friend standing beside him tense up before quickly relaxing again. Then, with Max making not so much as a whimper, Jacob watched with equal parts curiosity and wonder as the burning tip of the feather inscribed upon his wrist, like a pen to paper, a strange and unusual glyph of angelic letters and symbols.
When he had finished, Anahel turned to Jacob and asked for his arm as well. Jacob clenched hard his teeth and braced himself for the expected pain as the tip of the quill neared his skin, only there was none. Instead of an expected searing heat, the flame that touched his flesh was strangely cold and tingly. And even if there had been pain, it likely would have been easily ignored as Jacob’s attention remained fixed solely on the silver dollar-sized marking he watched being etched into his skin as it glowed fiery like hot embers left to smolder amongst the ashes inside a hearth when a fire is left to go out.
“You now join a rare handful of Nephilim who came before and stood where you are now to carry the sigil of the Illume,” said Anahel, once he had finished. “Wear it as the prestigious mark of honor it is, though without being too prideful, even as you one day, perhaps, may discover it to be a mark of exemption.”
Without expounding upon the meaning of his
words, he then turned his sights on the rest of the room.
“To the other Nephilim, I tell you there is at hand for you an even greater honor on this night—far greater than any sigil. It is by no accident or happenstance you find yourself in this heavenly paradise called Eden. You are not just offspring of the angelic order, nor are you mortal gods, winged and bestowed the exceptional power of some mythic entity. Your fathers brought you here for one purpose and one purpose only: to serve as they serve. We—the Guides and myself—have spent the past year readying you for that service. There is still much work to be done.”
Anahel’s face suddenly took a grim turn, as did his voice. “Now it is time for us to put aside for a moment the exhilaration of today’s games. As I made mention at Lions Bite this afternoon, Illumination is more than just a day of competition. It more importantly begins the next stage of your training that, over the next several months, will focus on the true purpose of what has brought you here to Eden, and for which we’ve gathered together in this illustrious Hall this night.”
~~~
A quiet descended upon the Hall of Light from which a pin could be heard to fall upon the floor. Only, in this case, it wasn’t a pin, but a feather—the same feather Anahel had earlier plucked from the Illume which he suddenly released from his hold with a casual yet deliberate toss of his hand. The feather, with the tip of its quill still carrying its blue flame, landed like a dart nearby, embedding itself firmly in the floor. The flame flickered once, twice, then took to the fuel that was the wood flooring created by the limbs of the trees in whose arms the Hall and all of Havenhid was cradled. With ever-widening eyes, Jacob and the other boys watched with growing alarm as the flame became flames and slowly began to spread like a blue oil slick eating its way outward in all directions and leaving in its wake an empty void where the floor seconds earlier had been. The boys’ first inclination was to step fast and quick out of the way of the blue fire approaching where they stood before the floor disappeared from under their feet, but Anahel—sensing the Fledglings skittishness—told them in a calm, unalarmed voice to hold still to where they were. Reluctantly, they did as instructed and watched the blue approaching fire without so much as taking a breath as the flames passed beneath their feet, and only when they realized they had escaped both burning to their selves and the imminent fall for which they all braced themselves for when the floor was suddenly no longer beneath them did they signal their immediate relief with one collective sigh.
“The forces of Darkness and man have been entangled in a lengthy and contentious struggle against one another for countless eons,” came Anahel’s voice once again. “Their mutual hatred, not to mention twisted passion for one another began the day mortal breath made itself heard within the boundaries of this Garden. Together they have weaved a patchwork of history like some unsightly homespun quilt and assembled a most grotesque scrapbook of memories the most dysfunctional family forced to exist under one roof would be hard-pressed to rival in all its mangled and maligned acts.”
The off-putting weirdness that came from standing upon nothing was short-lived when the window-like void, which offered the boys a view of the garden grounds beneath them, was suddenly filled with a swirl of color shades and shadowy shapes that gradually came together to form images. Suddenly, it was as if the Nephilim found themselves standing upon a massive television screen as a flash of channels passed beneath their feet. Only the channels were connected to specific moments long past reflecting images of persons and places and events made familiar in history books—dark horrible moments history would likely rather cast from its memory than relive. Instantly, a gloom found its way into the Hall and surrounded the boys as they were reminded of mankind’s torrid reign by the images that unfolded themselves in a barrage of unpleasantness: reflections of unspeakable crimes man would mimic with greater flare and design to add to the blood first spilled during Cain and Abel’s fatal spat; not to mention resurrected images of death and suffering birthed from the countless unleashed wars, from ancient battles fought with sword and shield to the modern-day conveniences of carrying out wide-spread horror with convenient aplomb through body-stilling chemicals and disintegrating flashes of atomic annihilation.
“Man was certain it had finally defeated its dark enemy in the end days of the second world war, and in many cases he was right to think so,” Anahel’s voice sounded over the images playing out across the floor of the Hall. “However, the evil which had schemed to bring about so much ruin had simply retreated back into the darkness it knew so well to nurse its wounds, leaving the victors to celebrate their conquest amid the litter of ticker tape parades and plentiful flow of fermented spirits. And when the streets had been swept clean of confetti and the last bottle of champagne had been swilled, and when the memory of the battle just fought had become just that—a memory shrugged off into the hands of history’s curators in favor of pursuits of happiness stolen by such a dark chapter—evil finally emerged from its den, like a bear awakening from hibernation to meet the spring. Only this time it did not come with a march of troops or the call to battle blaring from a trumpet; this time, rather, it was on tip-toes, like a cat burglar searching for an unlocked back door through which to enter to commit its next caper. And find it, it did.”
Anahel became abruptly quiet, as if his tongue—or will to use it—had suddenly failed him, and the look held in his face suddenly became even heavier than the solemn look caused by the onslaught of disturbing images being regurgitated in the parade of scenes playing out at his feet.
“Even those of us who know intimately the true depths of evil that is the Darkness were caught off guard by where it would wade next,” said Anahel when he finally found his voice again. “For the door it chose opened to a vault filled with a far more precious cache of treasure than money or jewels; it in fact led to the one place long shunned, violently even, by the Darkness: the sanctuary of the holy church built by God. There it dwelled not in shadow, but light; not the true Light mind you, but a false light known to often catch the eyes of man; as when a glint of pyrite is spied reflecting beneath the waters of a mountain stream. It dressed itself in the robes and collars of the righteous men of the church like the fabled wolf stepping amongst the sheep and, with its sights aimed at the most vulnerable and precious of the flock, it set about to do to the human soul what the bullets and bombs of war does to flesh.”
As Anahel spoke, the images of countless priests and clerics flashed by in an endless parade of faces, none of which held an outward or even noticeable blemish of evil. In fact, they appeared quite pleasant, decent and moral—virtuous even—which made the sight of them all the more uncomfortable to Jacob and the other boys to take in knowing what lurked somewhere beneath the flesh and bone and staring out from behind what appeared to be kind eyes was anything but.
“The collateral damage was immeasurable,” continued Anahel. “Mankind has long struggled to build with his faith a solid enough foundation upon which to stand, and slowly and surely the bedrock of this credence began to crumble beneath his feet in light of the unspeakable crimes and scandals perpetrated by these cassocked wolves. Pride, greed and narcissism dug its roots into the rubble like some fast-growing, invasive vine. And when faith was depleted, and the Light nothing more than a dim flicker seen in a dying candle, the Darkness moved in to steal once and for all the victory man had briefly enjoyed over it.”
Anahel’s voice was suddenly smothered silent by the rumbling of a massive fireball that exploded upwards from within the floor, and for a terrifying moment Jacob and the other boys feared the Hall of Light and all of Havenhid might instantly be incinerated by the inferno. The flames then quickly retreated, and when they did a most unsettling image revealed itself in the shape of the centuries-old Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris being choked by a billowing, unforgiving smoke while a fury of flames worked in concert to overwhelm the celebrated shrine in all its Gothic and stained-glass beauty and bring her to a slow and agonizing end while the
whole of the world looked on in horror.
Jacob recalled vividly the day just a few years earlier when the same unsightly scene brought his grandmother to tears as it unfolded as a breaking news alert on TV. The destructive fire had been ruled an unfortunate accident, but the images upon the floor pointedly suggested otherwise as they quickly morphed into the shapes of numerous other houses of worship throughout the world that had been left horribly disfigured through wanton acts of vandalism, looting, and outright desecration.
~~~
“Alas, my words should carry no surprising revelation when I tell you days much darker than what you’ve just seen reside before us,” said Anahel, sounding glum and disheartened when the ruins of the church faded away. “And it is in preparation of such turbulent and tempestuous times in the dawn of days soon to come that you—and those before you—have come to be gathered here. Let it also be known, in the same way Heaven has been nurturing and growing itself an army in which each of you have lent yourself to its ever-strengthening ranks, so, too, has another army quietly taken shape.”
The unnamed army Anahel spoke of revealed itself inside the frame of a lone scene showing a barren swath of desert landscape that slowly unfolded itself upon the floor at the Nephilim’ feet where a highly regimented flurry of activity was taking place in the dusty parched heat. Dozens of what at first appeared to be soldiers of some foreign army were seen making their way one by one through a grueling, makeshift military-type obstacle course. Upon closer look, the Nephilim could see these soldiers were not made up of young men, but young boys—far younger, in fact, than even themselves—dressed in a uniform of drab gray and black head coverings. At first, the Nephilim wavered silently on what was more torturous to witness; the sight of the boys looking like melting wax figures as they struggled visibly in the brutal, unforgiving heat beating down on their broiled hides, or that of the much more oppressive-looking men sporting long straggly beards and clad in camouflage lording menacingly over the young waif-like figures.
