Song of the Ovulum

by Bryan Davis

  Morgan died in the flood, but her sorcery allowed her to become a wraith, a quasi-physical phantom who could change her shape. However, her form was unstable enough that she had to take up primary residence in the realm of Hades, which was called Sheol at the time. There, she worked with a brilliant scientist named Mardon, who used Canaan’s genetic material to fashion a new genome, a cross between a plant and a human. Morgan also took Mardon’s mother, Semiramis, the wife of the king of Shinar, under her wing.

  In the caverns beneath the third circle of Hades, Morgan, Naamah, and Mardon created creatures that started as plant seedlings but later matured into humans. Many of the males blossomed into giants, new members of the Nephilim race, while the females became simple laborers called underborns who toiled under the merciless whips of Naamah and the evil giants.

  One of those laborers was Mara. She was unusual due to her special traits—intelligence superior to the other laborers, eyes that shone with an unearthly blue radiance, and stark white hair. Her sister, Acacia, another laborer with the same traits, had been cast into a river of magma, punishment delivered by Morgan, though Acacia did nothing to deserve it. Mara worked with Mardon in the lower realms of the underworld. While Mara helped Mardon as a laboratory assistant, the other girls dug in the cavern, mining for magnetite ore. One of those girls was the young and verbally challenged Paili, whom Mara protected from Nabal, their cruel taskmaster.

  At a lower level in the maze of underground tunnels and chambers, two boy laborers fashioned and baked bricks. One of those boys, Elam, had been kidnapped from his father, Shem, son of Noah, and forced to work in the mines, barely surviving on the morsels he could scrounge. Mara befriended him and later, when he was near starvation, fed him by hand through a hole in the wall. From that time forward, whenever they wiggled their fingers at each other, they were reminded of her gift of love.

  Elam found the tree of life Morgan had grown from the seeds she discovered in the Garden of Eden. After eating its fruit, he no longer hungered and never aged. Mara, since she was born and lived in the land of the dead, also never aged, so she and Elam retained the appearance of teenagers. He later stopped showing up at their meeting place at the hole in the wall, so their friendship seemed to have abruptly ended.

  It was then that Mardon discovered my ovulum. I spoke through the egg that I would communicate only with a maiden of nimble mind, and Mardon guessed that Mara could be that maiden. When he showed her the ovulum, I told her to visit Nimrod, Mardon’s father, an idea to which Mardon readily agreed. The two of them traveled through a portal to Shinar and met King Nimrod atop the Tower of Babel, a structure designed to reach Heaven. When King Nimrod met Mara, he was so taken with her beauty and sparkling sapphire eyes, he called her Sapphira Adi, a blue gem, a name she took as her own.

  When Sapphira showed Nimrod the ovulum, I spoke a prophecy of destruction upon the king and his tower. Moments later, the judgment came in the form of an attack by several dragons. Their fire created a spinning column of flame that caused the bottom third of the structure to sink into the ground. Nimrod and Mardon perished in the attack. Sapphira, still carrying the ovulum, raced away from the destruction and escaped back to Hades. She felt, however, that she was a hideous freak incapable of being loved. She wished to die, and it was then that I introduced myself as the Eye of the Oracle, the prophet within the ovulum. I taught her about Elohim, the God for whom I spoke. Despite the fact that her knowledge of Elohim was minimal, she came to love him in a way that was pure and very real.

  Mardon returned to Hades as a dead spirit and returned to his work with the Nephilim. In an underground chamber called the mobility room, he taught the maturing giants how to walk and become powerful soldiers, including a seedling Sapphira had raised on her own, a plant she named Yereq. Sapphira and Yereq had grown fond of each other, but Morgan taught Yereq to hate Sapphira and recruited him into Mardon’s army.

  Centuries passed. In the world of the living, Roxil, the dragon daughter of Makaidos and Thigocia, rebelled against her father’s commands to serve mankind. Her brother Goliath, also a rebel, took her as his mate and produced a son named Clefspeare, who sided with Makaidos when he came of age. Morgan hatched a plan to create war between humans and dragons, using Sir Devin, one of King Arthur’s knights, as a dragon slayer. Devin murdered Makaidos and Roxil and claimed that the dragons wanted to kill all humans. However, Merlin, a prophet of God, convinced the king to wage war only against the dragons who were not loyal to Makaidos.

  In Hades, Sapphira learned that she and Acacia were Oracles of Fire, twins who were supposed to disrupt Morgan’s plans. After opening a portal to Morgan’s domain, Sapphira searched for Elam in a castle-like house on an island surrounded by a snake-infested swamp. Through her searches, she eventually found a portal to the sixth circle of Hades, where Morgan held Elam prisoner. Naamah sang songs of hatred for Sapphira that constantly repeated in Elam’s ears in an effort to sway Elam to betray Sapphira. He refused to betray his friend and spoiled Morgan’s plans to obtain Sapphira’s blood for her wicked purposes. Sapphira then escaped the circle with Elam.

  Their travails took them to a place called Dragons’ Rest, where they found Paili and the spirits of Makaidos and Roxil. While there, Sapphira used her power as an Oracle of Fire to withdraw her laborer sisters, including Acacia, from an ovulum where they had been trapped for centuries.

  Although Makaidos was friendly to the humans, he told them they had to leave, because Dragons’ Rest was meant only for dragons. Sapphira and Elam departed, taking Acacia, Paili, and the other underborn girls with them. With the help of the ovulum, Elam escaped to the world of the living. Sapphira, however, had to return to her caverns in Hades, but she was comforted when she learned that her underground portal could expand into a viewing screen that allowed her to watch Elam and follow his adventures.

  Merlin gathered the remaining twelve dragons he believed were loyal to Makaidos and asked God to transform them into humans. Theoretically, they would be safe in their disguises, and since they retained their dragon genetics, they would survive for centuries and outlive Devin and any other slayer who thirsted for their blood. Unfortunately, Devin learned of the plan and began searching for and killing these newly formed humans. Merlin then assigned Elam the task of following and guarding Hannah, who had once been Thigocia.

  While the dragons tried to remain hidden, some of them marrying normal humans and bearing children called anthrozils, Devin spent centuries hunting them down. Gabriel and Ashley were born to Hannah and Timothy, who was once the dragon Makaidos. Bonnie Conner, the daughter of another dragon-turned-human, had dragon wings as well as an amazing gift of eloquence. After Devin murdered her mother, she changed her name to Bonnie Silver in an attempt to hide her identity. Billy Bannister was born to Marilyn, wife of Jared, who was once the dragon Clefspeare. In time, Billy’s gift of fire breathing manifested itself.

  Unfortunately, the slayers remained on the trail of the former dragons. In addition to Bonnie’s mother, Timothy and Hannah fell to the slayer’s sword, and their daughter Ashley had to live with her grandfather. Billy Bannister eventually uncovered the truth of his lineage, and through a series of dramatic events, he met Bonnie Silver. Jared transformed into Clefspeare again, and the slayer Devin became trapped in a light-absorbing gem called a candlestone. Billy’s adventures continued, in which he and Bonnie met Ashley, Bonnie’s mother was revived as the dragon Hartanna, and Billy finally embraced the Christian faith that Bonnie had known since she was a child.

  Merlin received a plan to retrieve the spirits of deceased dragons from Dragon’s Rest and usher them into Heaven through the coming of the dragon messiah, who turned out to be Billy Bannister. His journey was aided by his best friend Walter, as well as Ashley, Bonnie Silver, and Professor Hamilton. I had kept my own watch over them all, even exchanging a few words with Walter and Ashley as they traveled to England to aid Billy and Bonnie. Together they worked to free the spirits of
the dragons who had been turned into humans.

  As a result of his travails in Hades, Billy restored those dragons to life, including Thigocia, who had once been Hannah. Billy went on to fulfill Merlin’s prophecy, and the exodus of dragon spirits from Dragons’ Rest brought about its destruction. Morgan was finally defeated and taken to her ultimate judgment at the Lake of Fire.

  As for the dragons who still lived, each of them had the opportunity to become human again, if they wished, and all but Thigocia chose to do so. She believed she could more easily search for Gabriel and Makaidos in her dragon form. Thigocia and Ashley set off to find their lost family members, taking Walter and a teenage girl named Karen along with them. Their journey, however, met with danger. Arramos, who had seemingly perished in the floodwaters thousands of years ago, returned and forced Thigocia to separate from her riders by throwing Karen into a dark tunnel that reached into the tunnels of Hades.

  Walter and Ashley followed after Karen and eventually found her, along with Sapphira, and Ashley’s long-lost brother, Gabriel, and sister, Roxil. Unfortunately, they were not in time to stop Mardon’s army of giants from awakening and tunneling to the surface. Mardon himself reappeared and revealed that he had not given up on building a tower to Heaven. Now he planned to unite Earth and Heaven into a single dimension, just as he had done with Earth and Hades. Unfortunately, due to his efforts, the dead that were in Hades now walked the Earth, terrorizing people.

  The next part of this story requires me to reveal a dimension that had remained hidden from most eyes in creation, Second Eden. Timothy awoke in a hospital in this world, greeted by a woman named Angel, her son, Candle, and her daughter, Listener, a frail and silent girl. Timothy saw that the people in this world were accompanied by floating, ovulum-like objects called companions that provided the people with wisdom and moral instruction.

  Timothy met the leader of this world’s people, Father Abraham, whom he would later learn was the real Arramos, returned to life in human form in this world. The people of Second Eden were born from plants in birthing gardens, and many of them had actually been gestating humans on Earth, but had been slain before they could be born. He also noticed they possessed innocence, uncorrupted from the sinful ways of Earth.

  After an encounter with my ovulum, Timothy’s memories of his identity as Makaidos resurfaced, and with it, the memories of his two daughters, Ashley and Roxil, whom he learned were both on the Earth. However, an earlier meeting with Acacia revealed that their eternal destinies hung by a thread, unless a soul could be traded in a sacrifice. Acacia said an innocent lamb had already been prepared.

  Meanwhile, in one of his last acts on Earth, Merlin sent Elam on a journey through Hades to the realm known as the Bridgelands, with the goal of reaching Heaven’s Altar. Elam survived tests of his character to reach his goal, and I met him personally to discuss the next step in his journey. I instructed him to gather ten wandering souls from the Bridgelands. His observations of their character, however, made him question their reliability. Ultimately, they proved as faithless as the ten spies who fled from the giants in the Promised Land, and despite my appeals, they deserted us at a crucial moment.

  Fortunately, faithful courage similar to that of Joshua and Caleb showed itself in the hearts of two who stepped forward to stop Mardon’s tower at the cost of their own lives—the young teenager named Karen, and the former harlot Naamah who once served Morgan’s evil plans, but gave herself over to Christ in repentance and obedience. Meanwhile, Timothy learned that the lamb Acacia spoke of was Listener. He could not bear to allow this frail young one to sacrifice herself, so he took her place, dying for the sake of his daughters. In the process, his body was burned up, leaving only his bones.

  Although Mardon’s efforts to merge Heaven and Earth were thwarted, I knew the danger was only just beginning. I proceeded to shepherd groups of brave heroes from the Earth to Second Eden to prepare for a coming war. Elam, who was prophesied to be the warrior chief of Second Eden, arrived first, along with Acacia and Paili. Walter, Ashley, Thigocia, and Roxil arrived next. Billy; Billy’s father; Sir Patrick, who was once the dragon Valcor; and Sir Barlow, a knight from the time of King Arthur, then arrived in an airplane belonging to the Bannisters.

  In Second Eden, Abraham and Angel gathered Timothy’s bones and placed them in a birthing garden. Paili, who was also Sir Patrick’s wife, Ruth, was to call forth Makaidos with a song when the bones were energized during an eclipse. By adding Makaidos’s name to the heavenly empowered call, Makaidos would be resurrected in the garden. Sadly, the effort ended in disaster. Angel’s deceased husband, who was also the evil dragon Goliath until he came to Second Eden, appeared to her and instructed her to change the name in the song from Makaidos to Dragon, to summon him instead. He said to claim that I instructed her to do so, which was a lie.

  The changed song released Goliath and brought about a chain of events that allowed an army of Mardon’s Nephilim to enter Second Eden and join forces with Flint, a member of Abraham’s village who had rebelled against Abraham and had been exiled. To stop Flint’s army from destroying Abraham’s villages, Abraham and Angel sacrificed themselves to create a wall of fire that secluded Flint and his allies for four years. This gave Billy and the others time to gather the other dragons and strengthen their army. Over time, they brought more dragons to Second Eden, including Bonnie’s mother, Hartanna.

  At that time, Semiramis, Mardon, and Arramos, who was actually Satan in Arramos’s body, put their plan into motion. Mardon had secretly attached an invisible dimensional rope to Bonnie, which brought the dimensions of Second Eden and Earth together. Arramos blasted Mardon with a fiery jet that scarred his facial features and gave him the visage of a pathetic burn victim. He and Semiramis then went to Second Eden and offered themselves in assistance to Elam, Billy, and the others, a ruse that allowed them to plant a sinister seed in the birthing garden.

  Meanwhile, Bonnie and Sapphira ended up in a place called the Valley of Souls and encountered an angelic dragon named Abaddon. Bonnie also met her deceased father, and the two made a heartfelt reconciliation. Listener had been seriously wounded by a Vacant’s spear, and Dr. Conner’s medical assistance was needed in Second Eden. He agreed to submit himself to Abaddon’s authority and was resurrected in Second Eden where he saved Listener’s life with the help of Semiramis. Bonnie and Sapphira, however, remained in the Valley of Souls, in the care of a teenage warrior named The Maid.

  Despite Semiramis’s help, Billy and Elam did not trust her. Semiramis then presented Billy with a gruesome sight, a severed finger from Shiloh, and a warning from Arramos not to continue their battle against Flint’s forces. They discovered an odd plant growing in the garden, and Semiramis warned Billy and his friends not to uproot it. The plant—growing from a seed placed there earlier by Mardon—was likely linked to Shiloh’s life, and they could not know what in fact was growing there. If the plant were to be plucked, Shiloh could die. Billy set out with Acacia to rescue Shiloh, but the effort failed, and in the process Acacia and Shiloh both vanished into the Bridgelands. Semiramis and Mardon then disappeared from the village.

  Four years passed. Billy was able to bring more of the former dragons to Second Eden, including Tamara, also known as Sorentine, and Dorian, who was also Yellinia. Thanks to the energized garden, the two were restored as dragons. Billy had his mother brought to Second Eden, along with Yereq, the giant who successfully resisted efforts to make him hate Sapphira.

  With another eclipse finally occurring after four years, Billy thought they could summon Sapphira and Bonnie. Ruth had taken ill, but as it turned out, Listener was able to sing the song, and in the process of learning the words, she discovered that Sorentine was her mother. Listener had died in Sorentine’s womb, both victims of Devin’s blade. Billy had Listener sing to summon Sapphira, and she appeared in the garden. Sapphira then urged Billy to call for Bonnie’s return. Billy did so, and Bonnie, four years older and battle-trained, appear
ed. At that very moment, however, Goliath arrived and took Mardon’s planted egg from the garden.

  Meanwhile, the wall of flames finally dissipated, and Abraham and Angel departed for Heaven, exposing the Second Eden villagers to Flint’s army. Billy and Bonnie discovered that a disease had struck Flint’s village, killing much of Flint’s forces and rendering Flint himself too weak to fight. In a show of mercy, Billy had Flint brought back to their village.

  Shiloh and Gabriel had just arrived in Second Eden along with Mardon, escaping the destruction of the Bridgelands. As it turned out, Bonnie’s earlier arrival had also brought the dimensional rope with her, and in the process, she pulled the dimensions of Second Eden, Earth, and Hades together, destroying the Bridgelands and allowing for unencumbered travel between the three worlds. Worse, Devin, the evil dragon slayer, returned in a new body that seemed almost invincible. He had been in the egg during the past four years, regenerating with the garden’s assistance.

  I arrived in Second Eden to warn Billy, Elam, and the others that Satan had gathered an army of dead souls from Hades, and that the aim of Satan was not Second Eden, but the gate of Heaven. Flint and his forces were mere pawns in the deceiver’s greater scheme to attack Heaven. Since Satan did not use his demonic host but rather an army of deceased, mortal servants, we countered with the human and dragon forces of Second Eden.

  Devin then appeared and attacked Bonnie, in the process killing Yellinia, but Bonnie fended him off and returned to Abraham’s village. Devin followed and tried to kill Billy, but Acacia jumped in front of his blade. Since anyone who spills the blood of an Oracle of Fire is subject to a curse, Devin lost his invulnerability, and Bonnie slew the slayer once and for all.