The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (2 page)

Previously in
The
Windows of Heaven
…

Our distant past is not what we
think
.

Long ago,
a violent cataclysm of water and runaway continental plate movements re-surfaced
our planet. Another world richer in vast rainforests and gigantic animals once existed on the sphere we call
Planet Earth
. Many overlook evidence that men also lived there.

The Creator God E’Yahavah gave t
his forgotten world to the charge of humanity’s long-lived first parents, Atum and Khuva.

Yet they were not alone.

E’Yahavah
had created other beings, among them the Watchers, whose proper abode was in the heavens. The brightest of the heaven dwellers was Shining One, bard and chieftain of the Ninth Heaven. Given vast authority in the heavenly dimensions, Shining One
grew envious of the two domains E’Yahavah had kept from him—the Tenth Heaven, wherein the Creator alone dwells, and the newborn Earth.

Unable to storm the gates of the Tenth Heaven, Shining One and his cohorts penetrated Earth. In the sacred Orchard of Aeden
, they seduced Atum and Khuva
to revolt. There E’Yahavah subdued them all and issued a Great Curse upon the universe.
He transformed
Shining One into the Basilisk
and banished
him to the cosmos of Earth to
wait
out
the ages for judgment.

Nor were the man and woman exempt.

Everything Atum could see, measure, and touch—even the very stars—was changed. Death
, instead of love
,
became the agent of natural balance in Atum’s cosmos. The inner thought-world of the man and his wife became a labyrinth of fear, confusion, hatred, and guilt
,
while E’Yahavah subjected t
he outer universe entrusted to their care to
a matching
upheaval: Dragons and pack-hunting wurms grew hostile and swarmed from thorny rainforests, followed by natural disasters, decay, and ultimately death.

Even so, hope remained. Although marred by a self-destructive nature acquired in the First Insurrection, the image of E’Yahavah remained
in
mortal humanity
,
along with a promise more powerful than the Curse.

Nevertheless, the war in heaven was not finished. Shining One had left a seed of discontent to fester even in the minds of those
who
remained loyal—or who at least seemed to. That seed germinated among the heavenly order
known as
the Watchers.

Fascinated by humanity’s ability to multiply, some of the Watchers grew apprehensive at the idea. When Earth became full
,
would
the human race
expand into
the heavens? The situation on Earth worsened every year. Wars raged, and cruelty increased. Could E’Yahavah
really re
store
the
monstrous creature
that
man had become?

A cartel of Watchers thought they had the answer. They petitioned the Creator for permission to go to Earth and civilize humanity. The seed of fear that Shining One had planted in their thoughts had grown to fruition. The Watchers
became
obsessed with the idea of multiplying themselves through an evolutionary process that would slowly merge their kind with the human race. For this, they needed human women—which further opened the doors for an entirely new and unnatural obsession.

O
ne man remained
on Earth
not deceived by them
;
Q’Enukki the Seer spoke for E’Yahavah
,
and taught men laws that laid the foundations for a rapidly advancing civilization. But it was not to last.

Watchers led by Samyaza and Uzaaz’El descended to Earth against the counsel of E’Yahavah. Self-willed and self-deceived, they gave the tribes of men new laws and new knowledge—weapons and other prematurely advanced technologies for the elites that served them. Believing that they had established a Third Order between E’Yahavah
and the Basilisk, the fallen Watchers became far more dangerous than even the Basilisk had hoped. Their obsessions grew, with inflated ends justified by any pragmatic means. Yet they refused to admit to themselves that they had now made a Second Insurrection, and had thus become subject to the Basilisk.

Q’Enukki the Seer withstood the Watchers and their illicit offspring—the titans, giants, and demigods—powerful men and women, contorted spiritually and physically by religious and genetic manipulation. Q’Enukki promised that a deliverer would come for the faithful, but not until after
E’Yahavah
destroyed and restored the
world
twice
—by
fire and by water
. However, before these
W
orld-ends, a Comforter from
E’Yahavah
A’Nu
would arise to lead the faithful to safety.

At the height of his influence, Q’Enukki
vanished
into the heavens
to fulfill
a new and mysterious mission. His descendants
,
the Seer Clan
,
continued to spread his message across the world. In the centuries that followed,
the fallen Watchers
slaughtered
most of them
for opposing
their agendas
. Finally, a remnant of the Seer Clan retreated to the beleaguered land of Seti, Q’Enukki’s distant ancestor
,
and father of the Orthodox Archons, which were a remnant of an older order from Atum.

Dawn
Apocalypse Rising
began the story of the Seer Clan Prince A’Nu-Ahki, who lived centuries after Q’Enukki had vanished.

A’Nu-Ahki grew up in the shadow of a prophecy his father had uttered over him in the cradle. A convergence of signs pointed to the prince as Q’Enukki’s foretold Comforter
from
A’Nu.

A’Nu-Ahki found his own seer gift
after
the giants of the Samyaza Cult slaughtered
his wife and family
while making war on the Lumekkor Empire.
The
Seer Clan
found itself trapped
between these two antediluvian superpowers clash
ing
in the thorny rainforest mists.

But not all of A’Nu-Ahki’s daughters were killed.
The giants took
Uranna and Tylurnis as concubines to the Samyaza homeland of Assuri. The “Century War” followed, while the Seer Clan became a vassal of Lumekkor. To keep some independence for his people, A’Nu-Ahki entered a political marriage with
Na’Amiha
, sister of Tubaal-qayin the Great of Lumekkor.

Over time, the Seer Clan grew complacent in the political protection purchased by A’Nu-Ahki’s marriage. Yet they rejected A’Nu-Ahki as
A’Nu’s
Comforter because he had broken taboo by marrying a woman raised in Lumekkor,
which
all but worshiped
the hated Watcher Uzaaz’El.

The war raged, until a giant comet blazed as a warning sign that even those outside the Seer Clan could not easily ignore.
E’Yahavah visited
A’Nu-Ahki with a vivid apocalypse. Everywhere on Earth, society reinforced the evil in humanity and undermined good. The Watchers, who had come to civilize men with presumptuous noble intentions, had fallen to the same seductions faced by men. Chaos and tyranny resulted. In one-hundred and twenty years
,
E’Yahavah
would send a cataclysm to end the world. Only those who followed the Comforter
of
A’Nu
would survive.

Seventy of those one-hundred and twenty years have now passed
…

The Paladin’s Odyssey

For owing to these three things came the flood upon the earth, namely, owing to the fornication wherein the Watchers against the law of their ordinances went
a
-
whoring after the daughters of men, and took themselves wives of all which they chose; and they made the beginning of uncleanness. And they begat sons
,
the Nephilim, and they were all unlike, and they devoured one another; and the Giants slew the Naphil, and the Naphil slew the Eljo, and the Eljo mankind, and one man against another. And every one sold himself to work iniquity and to shed much blood, and the earth was filled with iniquity. And after this they sinned against the beasts and birds, and all that moveth and walketh on the earth
…

—
The Book
of
Jubilees
7:21-24a
(A Jewish apocryphal book from circa 120 BC)

Prometheus was one of the Titans, a gigantic race, who inhabited the earth before the creation of man. To him and his brother Epimetheus was committed the office of making man, and providing him and all other animals with the faculties necessary for their preservation. Epimetheus undertook to do this, and Prometheus was to overlook his work, when it was done.

—Thomas Bulfinch

The Age of Fable
, (1855)

S

amuille took Q’Enukki away in
the sky chariot about an hour ago. At least
Q’Enukki
thought it was an hour.
Could it have been a day?
Time itself seemed to have lost coherence.

Only the discussion remained.

The icy head of a gigantic comet filled the transparent bubble section of the Watcher’s star-chariot on Q’Enukki’s side—if
star-chariot
was the correct term for it. Q’Enukki did
no
t know—he was only human.
Samuille was not.
Sometimes the vehicle behaved like a machine, at others like a living thing. It obeyed the commands of Samuille, but also did things of its own initiative.

Q’Enukki suddenly had a hard time focusing on
the Watcher
’s answer to a question Q’Enukki could
no
t
quite
remember asking.
It was something about the comet and why we slowed to meet it—that
i
s it!

The glowing humaniform being seemed about to end his monologue on celestial mechanics—a detailed description of how the primordial waters of the
Abyss
u
deeps
had been divided by the expansion of space at the Beginning. Q’Enukki had asked—he fully remembered now.
N
ormally
the
topic fascinated
him. H
e had studied
it his whole life
back on Earth, though on a
far
less sophisticated level.

The Watcher ended his lengthy explanation with a question
:
“Do you know why I have shown you this comet?”

“It wasn’t about the primordial waters?” Q’Enukki said
;
pretending
his attention had
no
t drifted towards the end.

Samuille’s black white-less
eyes took on the gravity of the deeps
. “No. When we left your world, we increased our speed to near the velocity of light. Time back on Earth has moved more rapidly than for us in this chariot—just as time moved more rapidly beyond the white fountain than it did for the Earth inside
it
during the early days of Creation Week.

“When we left Earth’s solar system, we deliberately knocked this chunk of primordial ice from its course. It has now fallen into the attraction-well of the sun. It will orbit once, taking one hundred and fifteen years—Earth Time—to do so. We have looped back into the solar system to check its progress, with a few other things that are not for you to know.”

“Why will it orbit only once?”

“Because this comet is
Sword of the Breaker
; destined to divide the Leviathan, Tiamatu—that fifth inner planet which the Basilisk
has taught the sons of Earth to worship. In a sense, the shards of Tiamatu’s cleaving shall destroy the old Earth
and
be used to create the new.”

“How soon until the cleaving?”

Samuille laid a shimmering hand on Q’Enukki’s shoulder. “Even now the last generation to reach adulthood is being born.”