Closing his eyes, the priest mumbled his mantras to Marduk. He could only hope that his incantations would escape the blackness that was closing over him. And then he knew. Only a spawn from the black waters of the Great Deep could have inflicted the kind of carnage and horror that had come upon his town. Somehow, while the stewards of heaven were bathing themselves in light, a virulent darkness had taken root in the neglected ruts lining Creation’s underbelly. Another had risen in Tiamat’s place. And with it, a new kind of evil had been born into the world. Unlike any before it.
“What you call idolatry, I call the fullness of true worship. It seems that with its Elohim-only obsession, Judah has turned its back on one full half of the divine order. But to answer your question, of course I do not deny the accusations—any more than I could deny the very existence of our holy mother.”
Concerned with nothing else in all of heaven and earth and the eternal fate of men, he reached back for another arrow. For the slimmest fraction of a breath, the chieftain appeared dumbfounded by his choice in action. If only he could have frozen time.
They both knew right then that their time was up. The last grain in the glass suspended in momentary freefall. They held each other tight, trying to squeeze an eternity out of a prolonged exhale. Their entire beautiful life together barely a glimmer in the eye of some remote, indifferent god.
“Don’t you see Samuel? Before you can have everything, you must first lose everything. You think you are building a fort around yourself and your loved ones, but you are really building a prison of your own attachments. Loss will come to you either way. The question is, will you be immortalized by it, or will you be eternally ruined by it.”
When it became evident his petitions were being floated to an empty sky, he turned to cursing instead. The building rage nearly ripping him apart from within. He wanted to roar out in madness, to shake the hosts of heavens from their thrones and set fire to all of them and their sadistic creation. Himself included. But he could do none of that. He could only cover his ears and close his eyes and envision a day when he would reap his revenge.
“Some among you may be inclined to think of this as a random game of chance. But that would be a misunderstanding of how prophecy works. It is not a matter of a bead being picked out by that which is blind to determine prophecy. But rather it is prophecy guiding that which is blind to pick out the right bead.”
“Is pure righteousness not real? Is there only delusion on one hand, and cynicism on the other?”
“No, but there is suffering, and the absence of suffering. I aim for the latter.”
Thorny branches lashed at him, taking pieces for themselves of what the monster within would surely swallow whole.
He wondered where they were going. Where everything was going. The underlying currents upon which all was ferried were subtle but inexorable. He wondered why he even bothered to fight them. He could kick and splash all he wanted. But still, he would end up in the same place.
There was much more she wanted to say to him. Years worth of unhurried meals and long walks and late-night talks never-to-be but bursting at the seams of her heart all the same. But with the crunching of dirt and grass growing nearer, she had no choice but to let it all die in her aching chest.
But Samuel was already spinning to his left, his arm slipping magically out of the shield’s strap, and for a falling grain of time, it hung there before him, momentarily forgetting that the laws of Creation forbade it. But before earthly realization could dawn upon its wooden and rawhide sensibilities, Samuel caught the shield by its outer edges, mid-spin, and let it fly at torque's peak.
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The Satan and the Cherubim Overview
