Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (19 page)

The giant killers
were ushered through the gigantic halls of the palace by a squad of six Nephilim warriors. Edna marveled at the intricate sculpting of marble and granite on the architecture. These monsters were evil, but they were still capable of creating such impressive beauty. It could only mean that artistic creativity and cultural sophistication were not in themselves signs of moral goodness. The cruelest, most monstrous beast could torture and eat a man, and yet turn aside and carve magnificent masterpieces of sublime beauty worthy of gods.

Betenos wanted to hold Lamech’s hand. But she knew better. It was bad enough to be a woman captive. The heinous treatment she would
soon receive was bad enough. But if their captors knew affection bound any of the giant killer team together, it would provide their torturers more vulnerabilities to exploit, when they got around to carrying out their duty. If Ohyah revealed their relationship, all attempts at hiding the connection would be futile.

Lamech and Methuselah sized up everything as they trod the halls to their destination. The thought of escape
might be laughable, but a warrior never stops looking for ways to fight. Whatever they could learn of the palace layout or the cultural behaviors of their captors might come in handy in an emergency.

Methuselah watched one of those cultural behaviors in action as they were escorted through the hallway: Nephilim were slaves to their insatiable lusts. They had voracious appetites for food, drink, sex and danger of any kind that gave them a thrill. The
Nephilim guards kept sneaking glances at Edna and Betenos. Methuselah knew exactly what they were thinking.

On the one hand, he could certainly understand why. His wife was still the most covetable woman in any company
. She walked with that sexy sway of hips that still drove him crazy after all these years.

Betenos was
no less attractive. Though Lamech had sought to emulate his pious grandfather Enoch in spirituality, he could not avoid his good taste in beauty. Like patriarch, like son.

While Methuselah
worried about Betenos’ future, he knew Edna was very capable of using her seductive talents to her own advantage.
It may even be she who will get us out of this impossible situation,
he thought. They would take her to a solitary room. She would play them, incite their mind clouding lusts, and then slit their throats before they knew what happened. Ah, it was God’s greatest blessing to be married to a godly warrior vixen.

They arrived at a set of huge oak doors that opened to a feast banquet for giants. The vast dining hall had floor tables in a U-shape overflowing with every kind of fish, fowl and mammal imaginable
: roasted boar, gazelle, lion, bull, and bear, as well as whale shark and coelacanth. The one animal kind Methuselah noticed as absent was reptile. No snakes, crocodiles, lizards or dragons.

That would be too much like eating their own,
he thought.

It was a feast of flesh fit for kings
, because that is who sat at the table before them; kings — giant kings. They were the Rephaim who were first birthed when the gods came down from heaven. Eleven of them sat on the floor in their eating positions. One tossed a lion’s bone to two mushussu chained in the corner. They were the same type of chimera dragon monsters that had almost killed Methuselah’s team near Mari, at the beginning of their journey. The beasts snarled and fought over the bone. It was not an encouraging sight.

Thamaq and Yahipan presided
at the center table, the evident rulers of this city. They looked up from their revelry to see Methuselah and his team standing in chains before them.

T
heir eyes met. Time stood still. The enemies recognized each other. Blood rose up simultaneously in Methuselah, Edna and Yahipan. Hatred resurrected and gripped all their souls.

Yahipan stood and started to limp
briskly around the table toward the captives, the look of murder in his eyes.

“Yahipan!” shouted Thamaq.

Yahipan stopped.

“There will be plenty of room for revenge later.”

Yahipan limped back to his spot and plopped down in anger.

Methuselah thought,
Good. He has carried that wound I gave him for hundreds of years as a miserable reminder.

Edna
’s thought completed his
, That is a foretaste of the misery I am going to give you if Elohim gives me one chance.

“Methuselah ben Enoch and his band of mighty giant
slayers,” said Thamaq, with biting sarcasm. “Welcome to my
marzih
feast of the First Born.”

A
marzih
was a banquet that Rephaim indulged in the presence of the gods to celebrate life or death or a military send off. But no gods were present at this
marzih.

The other Rephaim
now stared at Methuselah’s team. They were the first of the offspring of the Watchers. The mightiest, the rulers of royalty, and they were all supposed to have been executed after the Gigantomachy hundreds of years ago.

The
se Rephaim all measured about ten cubits tall and wore robes of kingship that expressed primacy and power. Each sported a different design, based on the different tribes or cultures they represented. Some outfits were studded with precious gemstones, others with silver and gold. All of the Rephaim were hairless and carried the tattooed skin of the Nephilim, strange occultic marks and spells burned into their leathery bodies as a magic oath of fealty to their gods. Their eyes bore the strongest resemblance of any of the Nephilim to their reptilian creators. They were stronger, faster, more cunning, and more spiritual than those who followed them.

“Forgive my lack of etiquette,” said Thamaq. “Let me introduce you to the Council of the
Didanu
, who will soon rule over the wretched little lives of your descendants.”

So they were organized into some kind of multi-kingdom empire. But who was the emperor?

Thamaq gestured to each one as he gave their names. “Ulkan, Taruman, Sidan-and-Radan the conjoined twins, Thar the eternal one.” Methuselah did not hear the rest of the names. He kept his eyes focused on Thamaq and Yahipan, like a leonine predator waiting for the moment to strike.

Yahipan felt it.

Even though Methuselah stood in chains, and the kings were surrounded by the mightiest of the Rephaim in a city of giants, still he felt it — as if he was in danger.
Ridiculous
, thought Yahipan.
I am manifesting weakness
, he concluded and shook it off.

Methuselah and Lamech
did not know why this Rapha even bothered to treat them as if they had information to exchange.

Thamaq was playfully ironic. “As you no doubt have seen through your tour of ou
r good city, we have been busy. Apparently, so have you, I see. Learning the way of the Karabu.”

Silence filled the room. Everyone on the team
thought,
How did he know?

The other Rephaim
sat intensely quiet, anticipating the answer Methuselah might give. Genuine fear filled their eyes, as if Methuselah’s little gang knew something that would crush them. But what could it be that would scare them so?

Thamaq dropped his levity and turned deadly serious. “Where did you learn the way of the Karabu?”

Thamaq did not appear confident of his question, fishing for the truth with a bluff.

The Karabu never left their underground city
. Only a few bands like Enoch’s ever travelled outside of the Sahand area of Eden. So only rumors and legends ever traversed the land about the secret order. There was no way that information was going to be drawn out of any of the team — even under torture.

“Very well,” said Yahipan, “torture them.”

The Nephilim guards turned to escort the prisoners away.

Yahipan added, “But keep them alive. I want the leader and his whore for myself.”

Methuselah and Edna cringed. They could only imagine the horrors he had in store for them.

“Halt, Nephilim,” said Thamaq.

The Nephilim obeyed.

“What would the Council of the Didanu advise?” said Thamaq.

Yahipan grimaced with anger. He did not want anything slowing down his plans for the two maggots.

T
he conjoined twin Rephaim, Sidan-and-Radan, spoke first. When they did, they spoke in synchronization. It was as if they shared not merely their middle body but also a consciousness. “We have heard the legends of the Karabu,” said Sidan, “but it seems to us mere exaggeration,” concluded Radan.

“We do not have time for such trivialities,” said Taruman. “The die is cast. The furnace is stoked. There is no turning back.”

What were they talking about?
wondered Methuselah.
What strategy had these creatures of damnation implemented? What diabolical madness have we happened upon?

Yahipan tried to
conclude the discussion. “I will extract what I can from them and meet up with you with any important intelligence.”

“Be gone with them,” said Ulkan with the wave of his hand. “We have a war to conduct.”

A war? What war?
thought Methuselah.

The team of giant killers
wondered what devastation was about to be wrought upon the land as they were led out of the banquet hall in chains.

Methuselah hung by chains on the dungeon wall. He had already been beaten but kept in one piece for Yahipan. Edna lay chained to a mating altar, used for the Sacred Marriage rite. Lamech and Betenos were in the next room in their own bonds.

Yahipan sat before them, staring at Edna.

“I care nothing for the Karabu,” said Yahipan. “I have no interest in extracting useless secrets of some sneaky order that exists in the fantasy and rumors of desperate and hopeless slaves.”

For the first time in their
lives, Methuselah and Edna were really and truly afraid.

“No, little worm,” Yahipan said to Edna, “I am not even going to torture you.”

He paused for effect. “I am going to impregnate you and the other wench, and you will carry a Naphil in your belly till you burst at its birth and it eats your corpse. You will bear my offspring, then you will die. And I will have satisfaction.”

Methuselah
struggled to free himself from his chains. It was completely futile, but he tried anyway. He would die trying.

Yahipan smiled at him. “You, I will do interesting things with. I have never forgotten the day you gave me this limp. I have plotted all these years what I would do if I could only find you again. I have some ideas I have been waiting for the right opportunity to experiment with. What a pleasure to discover I can do them also to your own son as you watch. Yes, I will have satisfaction.”

Yahipan stood up and limped over to Edna. He leaned down close to her and sniffed in deeply her scent. Then his sandy lizard-like tongue licked her face for a foretaste. Edna cringed and almost vomited.

Methuselah had no idea how he could possibly get out of this predicament.
He did the only thing he could do at that moment; talk. Any amount of talk brought the tiniest delay that might result in some kind of miraculous opportunity. At least, that was his faint hope.

“Nephilim — w-were outlawed,” he stuttered through his pain. “Why did the gods allow them to build a city?”

Yahipan considered the question, and then slowly smiled. Perhaps additional knowledge would increase the pain as well, knowing the juggernaut they could not stop.

“Oh, there is more than one city,” said Yahipan. “The Gigantomachy was a hoax. It was a ruse ordered by the gods to draw attention away from their true plans; to build an army of Nephilim in Bashan, and train them thoroughly for the battle of all battles.” He paused again for dramatic effect.

“A war on Eden.”

The words hit Methuselah and Edna hard. And
sank deep. They knew the reason without Yahipan needing to finish.

“We are going to storm the Garden, destroy the Cherubim, and capture the Tree of Life,” said Yahipan.

The consequences of this plan horrified Methuselah. A malevolent race of giants with the power to live forever would reach heights of evil he could not even imagine. They would be invincible in their might and omnipotent in their rule.

“How?” asked Methuselah. “The guardians…” he sought to finish his question.

Yahipan interrupted him, “Those guardians have a weakness. The gods cannot invade because their own kind, the heavenly host, outnumber them overwhelmingly. And earthborn humans cannot enter because of the Cherubim sentinels. That is why the Watchers bred the Nephilim. Nephilim are a hybrid of angel and human, a creature that exists simultaneously between heaven and earth. We can achieve collectively what our genetic sources cannot individually. And our numbers are legion.”

Suddenly, it all came clear to Methuselah. Years
before, when they had killed the pack of Nephilim in the mountains of Aratta, he had wondered where their strange armor had come from and whether they were a part of a horde. Their strange armor was the insignia of this Baalbek army. They had killed a band of Nephilim scouts on a reconnaissance mission, gathering intelligence of the land surrounding Eden for their planned invasion. Enoch and his band of giant killers had stumbled upon the plan and had never realized it. And now they were about to be tortured and executed for getting in the way.

A rap on the dungeon door
Yahipan’s impatience. “What is it?!” he yelled through clenched teeth.

The door opened
. A soldier saluted and announced, “My lord, the goddess Inanna demands your presence at the mustering. They are about to begin the march.”

“
Son of Belial!” he cursed. “I told her I was occupied.”

Yahipan
might be angry at the inconvenience, but he responded immediately. One did not trifle with Inanna’s will. She once struck a high Rephaim dead for a delayed appearance before her. Yahipan turned to leave the room, but stopped, and turned back to his prisoners.

“I am going to inquire of my god. Now is your chance to inquire of yours. You might want to ask him why he cannot save you. But then I doubt he can even hear you.”

Yahipan left them alone.

Methuselah
admitted to himself that the thought had crossed his mind. Edna had been praying the entire time. They both knew that Elohim owed them nothing. Every breath of life was already undeserved. Elohim gives and Elohim takes away. Blessed is the name of Yahweh Elohim.

Simultaneously, Methuselah looked up and Edna stopped praying.

The soldier had not moved. He did not leave them or even close the dungeon door. He stared at them, at Edna. Methuselah could not believe their bad luck. Nephilim knew full well that to violate a Rapha mating was instant death. But these monsters were so driven by their lusts that they would risk everything for a taste of forbidden pleasure.

The soldier walked up to Edna and took off his helmet.

It was the familiar face of Ohyah. Only it was not Ohyah, it was his brother Hahyah. He began to unlock the chains that held down Edna.

“We
do not have much time. When Yahipan discovers Inanna did not summon him, we will have them both after us.”

It confused
Methuselah. “Your brother betrayed us. Are you now betraying him?”

“No. He is freeing your compatriots right now.”

Edna asked, “But why do you help us?”

“When we discovered your team in the clearing, he had to maintain the ruse or risk execution. We
are sons of Semjaza. That would be the highest of treason.”

“Then why treason?” asked Methuselah.

Hahyah finished releasing Edna. He moved to unclasp Methuselah’s chains. “I had dreams from your god Elohim not unlike my brother’s. It was a garden of two hundred trees being watered. I believe these were the Watchers who came down from heaven, the gods. As their roots grew, the water flooded the forest and suddenly the garden became ablaze with fire and the water evaporated. I kept getting this dream night after night. And I knew it was judgment upon the Watcher gods. Then I heard of the prophet Enoch and of his condemnation of the gods. I knew the time was at hand. So when my brother finally found me, I discovered he too had been visited by your god.”

He finished releasing Methuselah
. Edna leapt into her husband’s arms.

“Wait a moment,” said Methuselah. “You said you heard of Enoch’s condemnation?”

“We had received word that Enoch and some archangels had entered the cosmic mountain Hermon, and stood right in the midst of the council of the gods who could not touch them. He prophesied and it was said he was translated into heaven on a fiery chariot.”

Methuselah and Edna looked at each other with hope in their hearts and smiles on their lips. If this rumor was true, Elohim surely had a sense of irony.

“The gods are mustering their armies for war on Eden as we speak. Inanna is the Commander in Chief and the Rephaim Council of Didanu are the generals.”

Of course,
thought Methuselah.
Why did it not surprise me that Inanna was the force behind this atrocity?

Ohyah and the freed Lamech and Betenos arrived at the door.

“We have no time. We must leave now!” barked Ohyah.

• • • • •

Yahipan
quickly made it to the command center by the gates of the city. He limped his way past the security detail with swift recognition. When he arrived at Inanna’s tableau, she stood finalizing her plans with Enki and Utu who would accompany her leadership of the forces.

Enlil
had refused to be there as one of the gods under her command. Their long lasting feud over the control of the city of Nippur was known to all. She had managed to seize popular support if not political status through her machinations. If she succeeded in this campaign, she would most likely imprison Enlil in the earth and turn Nippur from the religious center of Shinar into the capital of an empire with herself at the top. Yahipan wondered if Anu had thought through the predictable consequences and whether he had prepared for such a coup.

Yahipan limped before the gods and knelt in fealty.

“My gods, Queen of heaven,” he said.

Inanna turned to look at him
. He noticed a distinct lack of expectation in her face. In fact, she looked annoyed, wondering why she was being interrupted.

“What now, Hobbler?” she exclaimed impatiently. She called him that in derision because of his persistent limp, an ongoing sign of weakness and reminder that he had been hobbled by a pathetic human.

She was not expecting him.

In
that moment, Yahipan knew he had been duped by that piece of baboon excrement down in the dungeon.

“Forgive me, your majesty, I only wished to alert you to the fact that my forces are ready to bring up the rear guard.”

It distracted her. “Good, do not slow us down, Hobbler, or we will leave you in the dust. Be gone with you.” She turned back to her plotting.

Once
Yahipan was out of Inanna’s sight, he barreled full force back to the palace dungeon. He accommodated his handicap using a skipping movement that maximized his speed when running. Unfortunately, it made him look like a jackrabbit scampering through prickly bush. All he could think of was figuring out how a Naphil could possibly agree to engage in treason. Whatever the case, he would immediately kill the males and impregnate the females without further ado.

• • • • •

Ohyah and Hahyah led the four giant killers through the dark dungeon hallways up toward the surface. They dodged and hid in the shadows, avoided personnel, and only had to kill one
Naphil guard who happened upon them by accident.

Methuselah hounded Ohyah with questions.

“How many Nephilim troops are mustered?” he asked.

“Thirty thousand.”

Thirty thousand Nephilim storming Eden?
“Are the other Watchers joining the battle?” said Methuselah.

“No,” said Ohyah.

“Why would Elohim not send his heavenly host right now to stop it?”

“Because the other Watchers have employed the satan to prosecute a lawsuit in the heavenly court at the same time. So the Sons of God are required as witnesses and counsel. It was all a diversion.”

That did not quite add up to Methuselah or anyone in the group. They were not familiar with the bureaucracy of the divine council and the legal procedures that Elohim used to procure justice. They had to trust that what Ohyah was saying was true, since he had been privy to the Watchers’ plot as a son of Semjaza. They concluded that if it was not true, he would have just let them suffer their fate at the hands of Yahipan.

• • • • •

Yahipan made it to the dungeon
. He discovered what he had feared most: the open doors and empty dungeon cells. He found a security detail of four guards and barked orders for them to follow him. The prisoners had escaped.

He
tracked the smell of their sweat upward. He had become very acquainted with Edna’s scent. It had aroused him like none had before. He would find them. It was only a matter of moments.

They stumbled upon the dead
Naphil and continued on, knowing they were close.

• • • • •

Methuselah continued his questions with Ohyah as they climbed the palace hallways toward the roof.

“How far is Baalbek from Eden?” he asked.

“About two hundred and thirty leagues.”

It would take a normal army twenty days to march that distance at a fast pace. But this was not a normal army. It was a Nephilim fighting force that could run all day with packs on their back. It would take them a third the time, perhaps seven days to make it to the perimeter of Paradise. How long then to defile it and raze it to the ground?

Methuselah felt sick. “We have to get to Eden to warn the Karabu.”

• • • • •

Below them, in the long passage
, Yahipan figured it out. They were going to the roof. But why? To cast themselves off? Why did they not try to find the tunnels beneath the city? It did not matter. They would all be dead or raped soon. The Nephilim behind him had all their senses tuned in for the kill.

• • • • •

The two giants and four humans arrived at their destination, the top of the palace building overseeing the entire city. They ran to the ledge and looked out onto the plain
. An awesome and frightening sight spread out before them. Thirty thousand armed Nephilim warriors filled the valley, preparing to march to war.