by Brian Godawa
Uriel walked past Gabriel with a smirk.
Gabriel rolled his eyes.
Then he noticed movement to his left. He could have sworn he had seen the movement of a split tongue that would match the serpentine feel of this slithering tunnel.
He kept his sword at the ready and stooped down to look into the dark recesses of the wall. Did he really see…?
In a split second, two sliver-pupiled eyes opened and a huge snake head, half the size of Gabriel’s body, struck at him.
Gabriel’s lightning fast reflexes kicked in. He barely dodged the monstrous fangs that brushed by him.
The momentum knocked him to the floor with a thud. He lost his grip on his sword.
The huge serpent had missed him, but it kept moving. It erupted out of its hiding place and wrapped itself around the angel’s body with preternatural speed. Gabriel dodged the bite, but he wasn’t ready for the coils that now gripped his entire body in a death grip. They squeezed the air out of his lungs so he could not call for help. He only got out a piece of whimpered warning. “Nin–”
In his mind, he heard the serpent talking to him telepathically with its slithering accent. Yessssss. Ningishzida am I. And you are mine.
Ningishzida was the ancient serpent guardian of the demonic tree of which the prophet Isaiah had written,
Yes, the night monster, Lilith, will settle there
And will find herself a resting place.
The tree serpent will make its nest and lay eggs there,
And it will hatch and gather them under its protection.
The fact was, Enoch’s companions had killed Ningishzida, and then so did Gilgamesh and Enkidu—because each offspring took on the identity as the new Ningishzida, the guardian.
This latest incarnate guardian squeezed the final breath out of its prey and protracted its fangs. It sank them deep into Gabriel’s shoulder. A human would have died from the venom. Gabriel sank into a coma.
The serpent knew it could not eat its prey, because that would slow it down for the fight. So it released the body and slithered back into the roots of darkness.
Uriel noticed that Gabriel had not followed him. He turned back in search of his annoying companion.
He found him lying on the ground.
“Archangels!” he yelled. He whipped his two swords around, preparing for a new attack.
It did not come.
He bent down to examine his comrade. He found the bite mark and knew immediately what had happened.
When the others arrived, he said, “Ningishzida.”
Raphael said, “That infernal serpent.”
Uriel sheathed his swords and gently picked up Gabriel in his arms. He whispered to the comatose angel, “I am sorry for my reckless frivolity, brother. I should have been here for you.” He turned to the others. “I will carry him.”
They continued onward through the maze of roots, down ever deeper.
The air became filled with the constant hissing sound of a serpent. “Ssssssssssssssssssssssssss.” It came from everywhere and from nowhere. It would make a human break down in madness, but the angels were not easily affected by black magic. They continued on.
Uriel was affected by the limits of his flesh, heavenly though it was. Carrying Gabriel slowed him down, and kept him from being able to access his swords should he need them in an attack.
The ubiquitous hissing sound also masked the almost imperceptible slithering of the large serpent behind him.
Ningishzida had planned for exactly this. To hamper them with hindrances and hunt them down, one by one, the weakest to the strongest. And right now, this smallest of the group was easy prey.
Uriel could not hear the monster approach, but his preternatural senses warned him—moments too late. He tried to set Gabriel down to draw his swords, but the serpent had already launched at him. It clamped down on his back, injecting the same poison into him that had taken down Gabriel.
Uriel collapsed.
The others discovered them lying in a heap in the middle of the passageway.
“We must carry them,” said Remiel.
He and Saraqael bent down to pick them up.
“No,” said Raphael.
They stopped.
His face was grim, but set like flint. “We must leave them.”
“We do not leave our comrades behind,” said Remiel.
“This time, we must,” said Raphael.
The others began to understand his point.
“The serpent wants us to carry them, because it makes us easy prey. That is why he is not eating them. We leave them here. When they heal, they will find their way out.”
“Through a pile of burning timbers above,” complained Remiel. They could feel the increasing heat above them of the fire from heaven.
“We are only four, now,” said Raphael. “We cannot afford to lose any more. We must leave them behind.”
The angels looked at each other with solemn recognition. They knew Raphael was right. And they knew he was the most torn by his decision, because he had been through much with these two over the millennia, especially in the days of Enoch.
Remiel said, “Then let us get on with it.”
Saraqael said, “As Uriel would say, let us bind some bitch goddesses and their goat.”
The angels kept their weapons at the ready and continued on down the pathway toward their destination. Now they went with even greater determination.
Raphael, Saraqael, Remiel, and Raguel were deep into the heart of the earth when they arrived at the sanctuary. The constricted passageway opened up to a cavern a hundred feet wide and about fifty feet high. A tremor rattled the ground under their feet and they lost their balance. Remiel fell against a large root. He jumped back.
“Ow, the roots are hot,” he blurted out.
They looked closely and saw some very subtle flames were already starting up on thinner roots like kindling.
Raphael said, “The fire above is descending. We haven’t much time.”
They broke out into the sanctuary, with arms presented. Two had shields, two did not.
But no one was there.
They looked around. In the torchlight, they could see that the walls were plastered with the skull and bones of thousands of infants. They were the dead sacrificed on the altar at the center of the sanctuary. Unlike the bark and roots above, these bones did not meld into the wood, but rather retained their white calcium constituency. It was a deliberate ornamentation.
On that altar in the middle lay the body of a young girl sacrificed to the goddess moments before their arrival. Her blood still flowed from her stained white garment down the altar stone to the floor. Her hand hung dead, swaying after dropping from her side.
The gods would be empowered by this bloodletting. It was their source of strength.
Another tremor rattled the sanctuary. Bones fell from the ceiling. Flames appeared high above as the judgment descended upon them.
The sound of scraping claws made them focus their sights behind the altar, where they saw two hyenas scrambling to hide in the darkness.
Raphael immediately knew it was a diversion. He yelled, “Behind us!”
They turned.
Two arrows came flying at them from behind. Saraqael was able to get his shield up in time to block one of the missiles.
Raguel had no shield. He tried to dodge, but he was a moment too slow. An arrow lodged itself in his left shoulder. He cried out.
The sound of a cackling hyena laugh echoed through the chamber from behind the altar.
Remiel stood in front of Raguel to protect him with the shield. Raguel raced behind the altar to nurse his wound.
Pan and Lilith were nowhere to be seen. They were attacking from the shadows.
The angels backed up into a tight circle.
Behind the altar, Raguel saw three hyenas cowering in the darkness. He swung his sword to scatter them. Scavengers of flesh. Disgusting.
He winced as he broke the arrow. He prepared to push the ar
row outward through the wound, when everyone’s attention was taken by a little girl coming out of the darkness.
She was dressed in a white garment like the one the victim on the altar wore. She was pale and fragile looking, the second precious innocent whose sacrifice they evidently had interrupted with their arrival.
She trembled with fright and called out in a frail voice as she stumbled toward the closest angel, Remiel. “Help me, help me, please. I don’t want to die.”
Remiel moved his shield to receive the little girl and draw her behind him.
Two things happened simultaneously. One, the little girl turned out to be a little boy dressed as a little girl. He turned into a demonic fury with fangs and blood red eyes. He leapt onto Remiel’s back and bit him deeply in the neck.
Second, the child victim on the altar suddenly rose up with her own crimson eyes and vicious fangs. She grabbed the wounded Raguel, biting down hard on his carotid vein.
Remiel spun around trying to get the thing off his back. It would not release its fanged bite. Remiel became dizzy. He blurted out, “Black magic!”
The entire sanctuary was a pit of black magic and occultic powers of hell.
Raguel had already dropped to the floor, unconscious. His little creature scurried off like a scavenger into the darkness.
Flames burst out on the ceiling above, as a second wave attack broadsided them.
Pan and Lilith came at Raphael and Saraqael. The cloven-hoofed satyr wielded his double long daggers against Raphael. Lilith commandeered a scimitar, a curved sword blade of bygone eras. But that was not the only strange thing about her.
It disarmed Saraqael to see this beautiful raven-haired siren, in her long flowing robes, fighting with the fluidity of a Karabu warrior.
He thought, What lethal beauty.
Karabu was the fighting technique the Cherubim of the Garden had developed in millennia past to protect Eden itself. It was more a dance than a muscular force. Some of the enemy had taken up the fighting style in order to match the archangels. Lilith was evidently one of them.
Saraqael did everything he could to match her leaping, flipping, twisting and jumping. He dodged a large burning timber that fell to the floor from above.
Remiel managed to grab the little vampiric creature off his back and threw her against the wall. She hit with a sickening crunch as half the bones in her body were broken.
He heard the feint echo of a hyena howl in his fading consciousness. Then a strange thing happened. The thing got up on all fours. Its legs were broken backward, its neck sagged from a snapped spine, and its elbows were bent at awkward angles. But it was still alive. It scurried away like some kind of human crab.
Remiel tried to make sense of it, but he fell to his knees, under the deep spell of the poison.
Through his blurry vision, he saw a huge black head, a serpent’s head watching him from the dark corner. He thought, Ningishzida. Everything went black.
Pan was a god of nature, and the angels were on his turf. So when Raphael had backed up against a wall, Pan whistled and a hundred roots reached out and grabbed Raphael, wrapping around him like manacles. Hot manacles.
Saraqael did not understand why his nemesis Lilith was not faltering. He had managed to cut her multiple times in their exchange, but she appeared unfazed. How much longer could he go if she could not be wounded? But how was that even possible? Even divine beings could be wounded.
Howls continued to echo through the chamber as the gods fought onward.
Raphael’s sword arm was free, but he was being squeezed by the burning roots around him. He would cut through some of them and return to his fighting, but then more would grab him. And more of them were on fire, singeing his skin through his leather armor.
Saraqael was tiring. Lilith got one good cut on his arm. He felt the burning slash. It was just enough for her to get an advantage over him.
The demon children tried to attack Raphael like wild dogs, as he held off the raging Pan. It was a losing battle.
The fire above them had become an inferno, burning furiously down the walls.
Saraqael’s weakened condition kept him from seeing another burning timber fall on him from above. It hit him in a burst of flames and knocked him to the floor. Lilith raised her sword high to cut him in half.
Out of the darkness, two javelins whizzed through the air and hit two hyenas at the back of the room. They howled in dying pain. A third javelin hit the third hyena in the head. It was dead instantly.
At the same time, piercing shrieks came from Lilith and the two feminine siblings. The demon children dropped dead to the floor.
Lilith suddenly manifested all the wounds that Saraqael had managed to inflict upon her which had previously not shown at all. They overwhelmed her and she dropped to the floor in a quivering heap of cuts, bleeding profusely.
Saraqael looked to the sanctuary entrance. Gabriel and Uriel entered the chamber and drew their swords. Their brothers had healed and come to their rescue.
Gabriel dispatched Pan in moments, as Raphael cut himself free from the enchanted, flaming roots.
The angels bound the god with Cherubim hair.
Saraqael pressed a hand over his wound and rose. “Am I glad to see you two.” Behind Saraqael the huge, black serpent slithered out of the darkness. It rose up to chomp him from behind.
Before it could launch at its prey, two swords criss-crossed themselves and cut off the head of the titanic snake. It dropped to the floor at Uriel’s feet.
“You are very welcome,” said Uriel as he tied up Lilith with Cherubim bonds. “But I do believe Gabriel and I are owed an explanation and apology for being unceremoniously ditched to burn up in the flames.”
Saraqael said, “Talk to Raphael. Executive decision.”
Raphael complained, “You all agreed with me.”
“Raphael,” said Gabriel.
Raphael continued, “We prioritized the mission as Yahweh told us to.” Remiel and Raguel groggily pushed themselves up from the floor.
“Raphael.”
“I didn’t know the flames would burn this deep.”
“Raphael!”
Raphael turned to Gabriel, who was looking at him with a big grin.
“We’re teasing you. It’s only a joke.”
Uriel added, “Of course you did the right thing, you lunkhead. We would have left you behind as well.” Raphael frowned.
Gabriel glanced upward. “Angels! Move!”
The fiery ceiling above them finally gave way. It began to cave in on them.
They found a last burst of energy to drag their wounded selves and the bound gods into the tunnel.
The ceiling collapsed into the sanctuary like a crashing fiery furnace, burning everything in its wake.
The angels and their prisoners landed inside the tunnel in a pile of arms and legs, as a wave of scorching air blew over them, singeing hair and skin.
Raphael looked at Gabriel and Uriel. “You two and your silly bantering. Now I know why Jesus is fed up with it. It’s going to get us trapped one day.”
“But we did save you, Raphael,” said Uriel with a grin.
Gabriel added, “That’s got to count for something, don’t you think?”
Raphael sighed.
Everyone got up and brushed themselves off.
A thought hit Raphael. “How did you know the weakness of Lilith and her demon spawn?”
Gabriel said, “Enoch and Methuselah ran into them in their day. The hyenas were daemon avatars. Animal spirits that accompany the gods and carry their vital force within them. That is why you could not vanquish them without killing their daemon.”
Saraqael complained, “Why did you not inform us of such an important detail?”
“I am sorry,” replied Gabriel. “It had slipped my mind.”
“For a couple of millennia,” griped Saraqael.
Uriel jumped in, “Saraqael, if you remember those days, we were all a bit consumed with more pressing matters,
like the War on Eden.”
Gabriel said, “I was going to tell everyone right before Ningishzida took me out.”
Uriel said, “We better stop gabbing and get these gods to their destination, or our bantering just may get us trapped.”
The six of them, wounded and exhausted, carried the gods down to Tartarus.
Chapter 19
“Jesus! Jesus!” Mary Magdalene could see him across the camp. But several men kept her and her female guests from getting any closer. One of them was Peter.
“I am sorry, but the rabbi is busy and we cannot allow everyone who wants to see him to take up his time. Least of all, women.”
“But I was with the Lord in the Cave of Pan. Ask him. I am Mary Magdalene.”
Peter’s eyes went wider. He hadn’t recognized the Ob without her exotic make up and priestess outfit. This Mary was dressed in plain clothes, though the women with her were not. They were aristocracy of some kind, and quite Greek in their dress.
“All the more reason,” he said. “A woman of your background and reputation has no business with the rabbi.”
From behind Peter came the words, “On the contrary, Peter, she has much business with me.”
Peter and the men turned to see Jesus behind them with Simon.
Peter stepped over to him and whispered, “But rabbi, she is the Ob priestess. She is no doubt full of demons.”
Jesus whispered to him, “Seven. She actually had seven demons. I already cast them out.”
Peter said, “But, women? What business can we have with them?”
Jesus said, “We are about to find out.” He leaned in. “Peter, I think you had better reevaluate your low opinion of women in the kingdom of God. They are your fellow heirs of eternal life. You had better get used to their valuable contributions. They may be subordinate to you in their roles, but they are going to share equally with you in your inheritance.”
Peter stood dumbfounded and chastised. Jesus looked at Mary, who was staring wide-eyed at Simon. Jesus leaned over to Simon. “And you had better change your monkish views as well, Simon. I think she has an interest in you.”
