by Mark Romang
Every scenario was painstakingly rehearsed, from entry to exit. They even rehearsed what to do if they failed to achieve the primary mission objective, and what to do if their transport equipment and extraction choppers became compromised, leaving them stuck in a hostile country. They had contingency plans for everything.
All this practicing and rehearsing increased their odds of success dramatically. Maybe Maddix was just partial to the SEALS because he used to be one, but he considered the SEALS to be the finest and most capable soldiers on earth.
But now he was immortal and a different sort of warrior. Now he was a member of a fighting team that never rehearsed a mission. They didn’t really need to rehearse. The Spirit of the Lord worked through them, giving them unstoppable power. They operated on faith, trusting God to lead and sustain them. The fact that they couldn’t die also gave them immeasurable courage.
Maddix drew on this divine courage as he worked his way through the charred trees. He glanced at his feet periodically, wary of the footing. He glanced at them once more and saw his feet kicking up ashes. He looked around at his gloomy surroundings, half-wondering if there was an active volcano somewhere in Teredel that spewed ashes and smoke. But the fog or smoke, or whatever it was, hampered his vision field. All he could see were the backs of his teammates and partially incinerated trees resembling snuffed-out torches.
As ugly and as foreboding as the forest was, he felt relatively safe trekking under the cloak of its cadaverous trees.
Vallen, who still walked in front of him, changed his direction a few degrees and veered slightly east. Maddix followed suit, ducking his head underneath a low-hanging branch. A few moments later the lifeless trees thinned out. And then they petered out altogether. A vast and rolling plain greeted them. No dead trees stood on this open barren plain, no underbrush sprouted from its parched and rocky soil either. Only various-sized boulders littered the dismal landscape, and Maddix imagined the moon’s surface looking exactly like this.
In a few places, giant rock formations resembling prison towers gouged the plain at its highest points.
Up ahead Michael stopped and held up his hand. His small but lethal army halted behind him. It quickly became clear why they stopped. Gathered on a low ridge perhaps three hundred meters away stood several-hundred demons. They all brandished weapons. Some carried swords or spears, others held battleaxes, maces and longbows. A few carried flails, even fewer gripped javelins. But the majority held pikes—long poles up to eighteen feet long, a large spearhead attached to one end. The pikes were used as thrusting poles to keep an enemy at a safe distance.
Over the heads of the demon troops flew more of the flying creatures. They flapped dangerously close to the tips of the pikes and appeared as giant flags or banners flapping in the hot wind.
Maddix moved up to stand by Michael. He whispered in his lowest voice, “I thought there would be at least a legion awaiting us.”
Michael nodded solemnly. “I’m thinking the same thing, Andrew,” he whispered back. “Something is wrong, there should be more of them,” he added quietly.
“How did they know we were here? Did they hear us?”
Michael shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Perhaps. More than likely they felt vibrations as we walked. Or maybe a flying creature got away and warned them,” he whispered.
Maddix became aware of Coleton Webb standing beside him. “The demons have positioned themselves in a box phalanx,” Webb said in a low voice, referring to Alexander the Great’s favorite battlefield formation. A formation his father, King Philip, invented.
Michael nodded his regal head. “Alexander the Great never lost a battle. The box phalanx helped Alexander and his 40,000 man army defeat King Darius III and his 1,000,000 Persian troops at the Battle of Gaugamela.”
“Alexander never fought against angels and saints. His box phalanx cannot defeat us,” Webb whispered, a humorous look sliding across his face. “Besides, there are probably only six-hundred demons standing on that ridge. And there are forty of us. I like our chances. They don’t have nearly enough troops.”
Maddix stared at the pike-wielding demons arrayed in a giant rectangle. He mulled over a few ways to defeat the box phalanx. When it came down to it, attacking the flanks stood out as the way to engage. But he wanted to up the chances of success even more. And for that he needed a distraction. An idea came to his mind almost immediately, almost as if it had been planted there.
“Michael, I have an idea how to attack them,” Maddix said.
Michael nodded. “I am not surprised, Andrew. Like King David, you were a man of war while on Earth, a man with few rivals. But whisper your plan into my ear. We don’t want our adversaries to know what is coming.” Michael bent his head way down so Maddix could talk into his ear.
Maddix moved closer to his leader and whispered into his ear. “Employing only a frontal attack would be foolish. We need to attack their flanks and rear where they are most vulnerable. I propose fourteen troops attack the front, and ten troops attack the rear. Divide the remaining sixteen troops evenly to attack each flank. But to get into position we need a distraction. That is where you come in, Michael. If you allow your glory to shine at its brightest, the intense light will overwhelm their damaged eyes and throw them into mass confusion.”
Michael stood up and looked down at Maddix. He nodded his head solemnly. He then bent back down and spoke into Maddix’s ear. “Your plan is workable. But do not look back at me when the glory of the Lord shines forth from me, or you too will be blinded.”
Michael motioned all the other angels and saints to gather into formation. Maddix and Webb joined the lineup. Maddix watched Michael divide the troops into four groups. He then whispered instructions to an angel standing on the edge of each group. That angel or saint then whispered into the ear of the one standing next to him and so on. This continued until everyone in each group knew their assignment.
If this communication technique had taken place on earth among mortals the instructions would have naturally altered by the time they reached the last soldier. But Maddix felt confident there had been nothing added to or taken out from the battle plan as it was passed along from warrior to warrior.
Maddix, along with Webb, Eleazar, Samson and six angels—one of them being Vallen—made up the group that would attack the rear of the box phalanx.
They re-formed a battle line, with Michael standing in the middle, several steps behind. The mighty archangel lifted his chiseled arms skyward and bowed his head. His long brown hair hung down across his eyes as he began praying in a language Maddix couldn’t understand, an angelic language Michael used to privately communicate to God.
Soon, booming thunderclaps shook the ground, while jagged lightning bolts lashed the black sky continuously from all four corners. Maddix watched the demon troops on the ridge lift their pikes into position.
A massive thunderclap—louder than one-hundred sonic booms shook the arid ground like an earthquake. And then all the lightning bolts coalesced into one colossal bolt, striking Michael and transforming the archangel into an intensely bright pillar of light that stretched from the ground up to the sky.
Teredel lit up for the first time in several millennia. The light pillar encapsulating Michael seared the plain with a holy radiance far brighter than the sun and chased the darkness away.
The battle set to commence, Maddix and his teammates synched their internal clocks and teleported into position.
Chapter 20
Of all the countless perks of immortality and living in Heaven, teleportation was one of the greatest. At least Maddix thought so. He couldn’t really explain how it worked, even though he’d been doing it for over three years.
He could move from place to place—no matter how great the distance between—simply by thought or willpower. And he could do it quickly. Almost instantaneously.
Maddix now found himself at the rear of the box phalanx, about twelve feet from the last row of demons. He pulled his s
word out from its scabbard and waggled it. A conflagration burst up from its hilt all the way past its tip.
Holding the Eden sword aloft, he advanced toward his foes. From out of the phalanx, the demons holding weapons other than pikes lurched out to meet Maddix and his teammates.
Completely blind now and obviously befuddled by the intense light, the demons nevertheless sensed—perhaps by smell—where their opponents stood. With all their supernatural strength they swung their battleaxes, maces and flails, and flung their javelins with homicidal intent, determined to protect the flanks of the phalanx and keep it intact.
Samson was the first to make contact. He swung his Nephilim bone at a demon holding a flail. The giant femur thudded into the demon’s neck and head, dropping him to his knees. The demon attempted to rise woozily to his feet but Samson clubbed him one more time with the Nephilim bone, striking him on the head and knocking him back down.
Dozens more demons left the phalanx to fight. They trampled over their fallen comrade in their eagerness to do battle. Vallen started pumping his arrows tipped with spearheads into the mob, stopping several in their tracks. Eleazar sprang forward and became a ferocious blur with his sword, fighting like a berserker only with more control. Maddix gave Eleazar a wide berth, and engaged a demon brandishing a battle axe.
Tall and powerfully built, reddish hair flowed down onto the demon’s shoulders. Once a beautiful servant of Elyon, his grave sin had twisted his once radiant countenance into something monstrous.
Maddix wanted to test the demon’s vision to get a feel for how bad his handicap was. Maddix thrust his flaming sword toward the demon’s midsection.
The demon sidestepped to his right, easily avoiding the flaming tip. Maddix assumed the demon felt some sort of vibration in the air as the sword plunged toward him, because the demon’s eyes were covered with a translucent membrane that made his eyes look like they were made of tarnished silver. There’s no way he sees me, Maddix thought. But maybe he heard the flames hissing.
The big demon counterattacked, exploding toward Maddix, swinging his battle axe downward in a chopping motion toward Maddix’s head, the same motion used to split firewood.
Not wishing to test the laws of immortality by allowing his head to be split in two, Maddix teleported out of danger, ending up behind the demon. The demon’s axe met nothing but air before plunging into the ground. The demon’s large V-shaped back posed a big target for Maddix. He thrust the Eden sword into the demon’s back between the shoulder blades. The flaming sword went all the way through, snapping bone and searing flesh as it penetrated.
The demon screamed and shook violently before toppling over onto his face and lying still.
As he pulled out his sword from the demon’s back, Maddix became aware of a presence above his head. He looked up and saw that the flying creatures had joined the fray. They glided overhead, screeching their distinctive cries and flinging javelins. A javelin barely missed Maddix and stuck into the ground near his feet, its shaft vibrating wildly upon impact.
As he looked around for his next opponent, Maddix wondered how the group of angels attacking the flanks and front of the phalanx were doing. Between the thunderclaps he could hear cracking sounds, like the sound a pike would make if snapped in two. Somewhere Samson is wreaking havoc with his Nephilim bone.
A moving shadow loomed over Maddix’s head. He looked up, knowing beforehand what caused the shadow. Like at the riverbed, a flying creature glided in at him with large daggers in its hands. Maddix timed his swing and struck the flying creature about the neck, severing its head. The creature’s head cartwheeled across the rocky plain and stopped at the feet of a demon about twenty meters away.
The demon peered down at the head, and then looked directly at Maddix, making eye contact. He’s not blind at all. His eyes are normal. He can see me, Maddix thought. He watched the demon stoop down and pick up the head. As soon as the demon straightened back up he flung the head at Maddix.
A few pitchers in Major League Baseball can throw a fastball at speeds reaching 100 miles per hour or more. Maddix could tell the head traveled toward him at a speed much greater. And like an overmatched hitter in the batting box facing a flame-throwing pitcher, Maddix began his swing long before the head neared the strike zone.
Maddix swung the Eden sword as if it were a ball bat. His swing wasn’t the looping swing of a homerun slugger, but the shortened swing of a line drive hitter. The flaming sword connected solidly with the severed head, igniting it instantly. The flaming head caromed back toward the demon at even greater speeds, striking the demon in the midsection.
The impact knocked the surprised demon backward. He tumbled end over end like a tumbleweed across the plain, finally slamming into a boulder pile. Maddix ran over to the stunned demon and plunged his sword deep into the demon’s chest. Silvery-black blood gushed out his impaled chest. “You might want to work on your pitch location. Your heater hung up in the zone for me,” Maddix wisecracked.
He pulled out his sword just as Webb appeared out of nowhere and stood beside him, his scimitars dripping demon blood. He giggled like a school boy. “It’s here, Mad Dog! The Covering is here! God is right on time as usual. When we needed the Covering the most, it arrived. The demons can’t hurt us at all.”
The Covering Webb referred to was better known as the Armor of God, or the Shield of Faith, or the Breastplate of Righteousness. Whatever its moniker, it kept Satan and his troops at bay and protected God’s people when under spiritual attack.
Maddix grinned. Only moments ago he longed to be back in Heaven with Spencer and Sara, where he felt safe. But really, the safest place to be…was always right in the center of God’s will.
Brimming with confidence now, he entered the melee and hacked and slashed his way through several more fallen angels. His demonic foes fought back just as violently, but their axes and maces bounced off him harmlessly. With the Covering in place the battle soon became a one-sided slaughter.
Hand to hand combat is always brutal, but this battle took violence to a whole new level. Still, Maddix felt no guilt as he inflicted severe pain on the demons. Unlike the earthly wars he fought in, his supernatural enemies couldn’t die. They could only sustain wounds. The vanquished demons would regroup, rest and rejuvenate until back at full strength, and then eventually return to Satan’s service.
The battle raged on and on. How long, Maddix didn’t know. When he became a saint he lost his sense of time. He didn’t consider his inability to track time as a handicap, rather he thought of it as a blessing. Everything always seemed new and fresh this way.
The battle alternately slowed and surged. Vanquished demons and flying creatures littered the plain. Michael stalked through the wounded, checking to make sure none of the demons were merely faking their injuries. Glorious light still illuminated Michael, but the heavenly brilliance had begun to fade, and darkness crept back into Teredel like an army of ghosts.
A demon suddenly took flight, rocketing up into the sky, desperate to escape. Several angels flew up after the demon and tackled him in midair, roughed him up while in the sky, and then brought him back down, tossing him into a pile of his comrades.
Finally the fighting stopped altogether. Michael rounded up his troops. He walked back and forth in front of them. His wings had unfurled at some point in the battle, and Maddix thought he looked even bigger than usual. And like any good military leader, Michael praised his troops for their bravery and decisive victory.
Their morale soared; determination to complete the mission soared even higher. “From here on out we shouldn’t face much resistance,” Michael said. “And we should be able to enter the stadium without harassment. So let’s finish this mission and find Mithellius.”
“What about them?” Webb asked, pointing at the wounded demons all around them. Those stuck by Vallen’s arrows lay still and didn’t move. Almost all groaned in agony, and the ones Maddix fought smoldered like embers.
“Leave them
be. We’ll be long gone before they can recover,” Michael answered. He then divided his troops into two groups. “The group on my left, I want you to enter the stadium at the north end. And the group on my right, you will enter the stadium on the south end. There’s no more need to walk in stealth mode. We do things quickly now.”
And without saying another word, Michael teleported to the stadium. The rest of them followed suit.
Chapter 21
Olympic Peninsula
The drizzle had stopped, and morning sunlight broke through the clouds and warmed Nathan Banks as he waited for Brooke to catch up to him. Since dawn, they had painstakingly traveled along the stream’s rocky shoreline, hopping from rock to rock like frogs.
Their method of travel was agonizingly slow, but he felt the time given up would reap rewards down the road. They were leaving no trace, no trail at all for someone to track them.
If the bunker was to be a haven for them, it had to remain a secret.
Brooke came to a stop a few feet away. “Whew, this a workout, Nathan. In a different world, a world without Henrik Skymolt, you could start a new fitness craze with this rock hopping.”
Banks shrugged. “Well, you deserve a break. The going will become easier for a while.” Banks squatted down on his haunches. Stonecrop grew on a medium-sized boulder next to his feet. He harvested some and handed Brooke a few of the fleshy leaves shaped like balls.
She looked at the leaves in his hand. “What is that?”
“It’s called stonecrop. It grows on rocks here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s better in the spring. But you can eat it year-round. It has a mild taste. Some people think stonecrop tastes like cucumber.”
