13 Angels

Prologue

Earth is an alien landscape for a group of surviving explorers. Amidst cosmic and geologic cataclysms over millions of years, Thirteen Angels evolve to create a world defined by their own imaginings. They are unaware of progressive malfunction and suffer grievously under long exposure to atmospheric radiation.

Time deludes them of their origins. Yet, they survive the ravages of impossible longevity as immortals to recreate themselves in the image of a shifting environment that does not favor their existence. The Angels conceive a rescue through the worship of guiding technology they no longer comprehend.

The confounded Angel’s desire for death and repatriation to Paradise becomes infused with nature’s demand that every earthbound species question and adapt to this mysteriously ephemeral environment. Parallel evolution proves a confrontational path upon which two aggressive players inevitably clash on nature’s savage stage.

The immortals inability to die becomes their nemesis after ages of witnessing a perpetual cycle of creation and destruction. Everlasting life forces them to engender an otherworldly justification explaining the extraordinary rise of mankind, a species that doesn’t suffer eternity.

The Angels disintegrating software fails to interpret Earths organic design causing them to take a bizarre spiritual direction to rationalize their existence. They meticulously plan a return to paradise by exploiting mankind’s instinctual weaknesses.

Sacred scrolls dictate a Clash of Civilizations must occur to bring about the End of Time. The Angels use psychic influence, an army of nephilim thralls and man’s nuclear technology to design an extinction event. They build the ultimate destructive beacon to draw God’s attention. They are driven by a misunderstood covenant as a means to achieve death.

Questions regarding the origins of mankind and traditional interpretations of the physical and spiritual universe are examined when a simple soldier, Jake Sabados, discovers proof that a terrible accident occurred in prehistory.

Our protagonist, a soldier of the New World Order, sees no point in living except to satisfy a convoluted sense of honor and an intention to die on his own terms. Lucky Jake has an uncanny ability to survive. He lives on the periphery of animism believing supernatural forces protect him from harm. Obsessive personal rituals guide his every action.

Jake accidentally discovers the Angels diabolical plan of an extinction event while on mission in Afghanistan. He is convinced to save the world by a mysterious cabal he knows as The Paladins, realizing man’s vision has not been of his own design. Jake agrees to become the nexus of a powerful alien technology and fight for his species survival after finding new hope in love.

CHAPTER ONE

CASTLE D’ARC 2065

Tangled lightning lashed Castle D’Arc. Its crenulated silhouette outlined a gap-toothed scream against every explosive crack of fire. Each quick following barrage of thunder suggested Armageddon. The embattled redoubt fought raging tides threatening to rip out foundation stones and cast them into the greedy maw of an encircling leviathan. Two cassock-draped figures strode desolate battlements, unrecognizable under long woolen hoods. The cloth was stretched into shapeless socks, a vain attempt to thwart the stinging slap of freezing rain.

Damn this weather, snarled the smaller man. His teeth flashed white. No matter which way he turned, an icy wind stabbed at his eyes, blinding him, as if the world vengefully denied him sight of it. Another splinter of ragged lightning shred the gloom, exposing his upturned face, a mask of angry vexation. This is how I imagine hell. He beat his skeletal hands and stamped like an impatient stallion.

It is a hell of your own creation brother. A familiar voice subtly reminded Azazel they stood on hallowed ground. Conscious-stricken, he choked back his irreverence and offered up a prayer of contrition. The rueful monk hoped his deity would understand a loyal servant’s frustration after a lifetime of disappointment.

Oh lord, he begged, Have mercy. He bowed his painfully stiff back into the attitude of a grateful supplicant and whispered, If you look down upon me you will see I have been the victim of the constant and unremitting malice of fortune. His need for penance sated, the monk resumed his march. Where is it? He returned to ranging the impenetrable night with bursts of psychic energy. Azazel shook his fists in the face of the wind like a combatant avowed to fight on in defeat. He prayed the coven’s collective will was strong enough to turn back this storm. It felt certain nature’s wrath was set deliberately against them.

It’s just a storm, the same voice chastised. Remember where you are. Azazel kept his lips closed with the expression of a man inwardly laughing that he would be the one to welcome the Holy Arc and resurrect the Eye of Ba’al. Destiny chose him to lead this cycle. He hoped it was the final step towards ending his miserable life.

I don’t see you out here he shot back contemptuously. His obdurate prayers had been stripped naked by the tempest. Azazel murmured a continuum of humble repentance to appease his critics. He shivered until his rattling teeth threatened to shatter like glass. The second man remained stoic, an antipodal pendulum in stark contrast to the others obvious rancor. In silence he attended a practiced regimen and strict code of obedience without a flicker of animosity. He seemed not to notice the night’s inclemency nor hear his master’s constant flood of expletives.

You islanders are a breed unto yourselves. Azazel dropped his dour comment at the feet of the indifferent acolyte as they passed. He’d sensed the corporeal nature of the isolated nephilim as soon as he arrived. The island brood was raised without civility, opposed to more sophisticated thralls his secretive order had dispersed around the world. These Nephilim of the Rock were here to guard the castle against intrusion and would never leave. There was no need to grant them sophistication. This one seems an oblivious turd, he thought. Azazel hadn’t returned to the Rock since completing its construction two thousand five hundred years earlier. If his plans were successful he’d be the last Angel to lead before the anticipated thirteen thousand year celestial cycle of destruction reappeared and the immortal brotherhood would exchange purgatory for paradise. He experienced a gut wrenching realization they would continue to suffer if he failed. Azazel wouldn’t have returned to this place unless it was a matter of life or death.

The two solemn sentry’s progress was marked with dreary steps and an unintelligible stream of profanity. Each monk made frequent use of the castles antiquated design by ducking behind alternating merlons and gaping crenels built into the wall to garner what meager shelter could be found. Azazel was proud the fortress he’d built remained secret. He remembered how carefully The Watchers had scoured the world before choosing this place. He reminisced while waiting, of how his brotherhood came to be here. The Watchers were outcasts from the beginning; a forgotten people, left behind by the passage of time. They’d been first to know life, but in an act of stultifying mystery the world inexplicably died and their gods abandoned them. They were left to fend for themselves, to unravel the mysteries of living scripture… and they’d discovered the gift.

He cocked an ear, had he heard a blade chop against the wind? Azazel envisioned the events about to unfold. He was excited to find himself in a future he’d prophesied. We can’t fail, he prayed. His knotted fingers interlaced so tightly he felt bone-cracking pain. The life cycles of many predecessors had gone into planning what he’d set in motion. It’s been so long he sighed. His heart was sick with longing. A screaming gull caught in the grip of the tumultuous wind blew past almost striking him.

The tortured cry drew his wandering mind back on to the castle wall. A dream began to form behind his tearing eyes. His heart beat like a drum. Azazel channeled energy from the brothers waiting below and burned with their fire. His desire so acute it strangled him. His rising angst was magnified twelve-fold by those separate souls filling his chest staring vicariously into the future through his eyes. The elderly monk cursed the storm for hiding the precious object. Be gone you foul bitch, he roared at a sudden gust that blew trumpets in his ears and violently beat his face. The maelstrom played havoc with his ability to project energy at distance with precision. Nature aligned her malice around the fortress like an impenetrable vortex. Azazel sensed the presence of the half-breed as they lined up for another pass. Nephilim, he called. The word was distasteful enough to make him spit the last syllable against stone.

The nephilim are a necessary evil, an inner voice appealed. He appraised the brutes brooding disposition. Because thirteen is too few against the multitude of humankind, the voice said. He felt the dull animus of the nameless one. Soon enough, he was assured. It won’t matter what this surly beast thinks of his master.

We’re so close, Azazel teased the mocking wind with prophetic words. The perfect dream of his ancient brotherhood would guide him through this ordeal. Nature could writhe in hell as far as he was concerned. So close now, he repeated his mantra. The ideal of final victory over nature’s false dictum played triumphantly against this intemperate storm. Soon, God would return, and they would rest in peace. So close, he thrilled.

And then, an errant tendril touched his soul and he swooned. The thunder struck monk reached inside his cassock, an autonomic response after many years of pure solitude. He pulled an elegant silver chain encircling his neck, running down to ensnare his genitals in a cold metal loop. A bulbous decorated fob, smoothed by constant touch and etched with the intricate design of a stylized tree embracing the Eye of Ba’al, rested easily familiar in his hand. Each slippery link was sharpened to a razors edge. The slightest tension caused metal to bite. A delicious rush spilled over him as he pulled the chain taut. The first sigh of anticipation stopped his breath, a trickle of blood escaped.

I cut myself to spite the life within me, he prayed. Please God… let me die. In a state of heightened sensitivity, he plucked a second lost note out of the air and tasted success. An unmistakable mechanized thrumming filled his ears. He’d proven himself stronger than nature, and felt a surge of power. Azazel’s refined senses picked scattered flotsam from the teeth of the storm and traced it back to its source. He couldn’t see through the tumultuous night, instead he fixed his mind to a trailing vibration; the way a hawk finds a field mouse by listening for it’s trembling heart beneath any clever shelter.

The wayward wind made it difficult to gauge which direction the lost wave had traveled. Azazel focused his prodigious energy on the sacred object and darkness shielding his vision was dismissed. With this amplified psychic certainty a shape appeared in his mind, like a wraith without form… many miles away. Inside a flying machine, he descried a life force; quite apart from the man he now saw clearly, who was wrenching the cyclic stick between his legs and pushing at floor pedals to control a bucking helicopter. Azazel felt his heartbeat merge with the approaching prize; the fine measure stole his breath away. He ordered the nephilim to cast his foresight into the void. The symbiotic energy was weak but served to bolster his own. He’d use what nephilim inherited from Angels at birth. Together they would will the pilot towards them. The nameless nephilim stepped from a deep shadow like a moth to flame. Azazel saw how intimately the acolyte grasped an articulated iron bar under his cassock, the symbol of his pathetic rank. Faithful dog, the elder laughed. Azazel easily perceived this one was anxious to prove himself to The Order but trust was out of the question. The Angels promised to reward loyalty with a name, as a step towards immortality.

An instinctive lust for longevity was humankind’s greatest weakness. Azazel felt revulsion as the nameless one drew closer. He stamped his soles warning the nephilim to stop. The master caught him surreptitiously check the face of a heavy pocket watch hung by a string tied at his waist like a flagellants belt. A fixation with time was an overt human weakness. Azazel knew the covetous acolyte had stolen the golden object from a trove beneath the castle.

Enjoy it while you can, Azazel smirked cynically. Humans were tuned to the cosmic rhythm of their revolving planet and its sucking moon. This was coupled with basic instinct to covet what they could not possess. That unholy trine drove them to collect paltry objects. Men reacted to material possessions instinctively; the way lesser animals and certain birds do when secreting sparkling debris into bowers and lining their nests with colored ribbon. He’d watched disdainfully as humans adorned themselves with baubles and cloth.

How droll they are, he sighed. Azazel would allow the nephilim his obscene fascination with the timepiece… but not to keep secrets from his master. He scolded the acolyte, Time is the invention of the outsider. His power shocked the brute. The reprimand stung. Azazel shot a second rebuke into the nephilim’s mind, taking pleasure in the beasts’ reaction … burned by sudden fire.

CHAPTER TWO

150,000 BCE

Who are they father? whispered the girl. The setting sun discovered a line of shimmering silhouettes along the undulating lip of a far dune. She traced the uneven horizon with a shaking finger to assist her father’s aging eyes. The child had learned to fear itinerant encounters. These strangers appeared to float above the sand, as if her eye was caught by the trick of a wavering mirage. The walkers draped black Keffiyeh around their heads, across their faces, and around their necks, in the fashion of no tribe she recognized. Each figure wore a long black thobe instead of the cool reflective white cloth of desert men. They covered themselves with the flowing gumbaz of priests, gauzy over-robes flecked with gold and shades of blue glistening against the failing light. The time for mirages was past, the realization made her uneasy.

Sssshhhh child! Father slapped a rough hand over his daughter’s mouth and pushed the child’s face into the sand. By God, be quiet Noora, he hissed. The girl sensed fear and shivered against his callused hand. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Father slip a curved silver knife, the family Shabaria, out of its patterned copper sheath. When the unblemished blade cleared the scabbard it reflected her worry. Its presence was an unwelcome intrusion, as if a predator had entered her world. Dread overwhelmed her. With this knife Father would kill animals for sacrifice when returning to her Buyuut. Papa meant to draw blood.

Oh please God, the girl prayed. Her heart fluttered like a prisoner awaiting execution. Let them pass by. The elder nomad undermined the soft sand, digging a pathetic sanctuary. He twisted deeper into a shallow cavity, seeking refuge from the unknown. Noora mimicked his actions, hugging the ground and burrowing, knowing they had good reason to fear. They have no animal’s Papa, she offered hopefully. Perhaps they are lost… like us. Father replied with silent anger, planting his daughters face further into the fine sand. Noora felt the sting of abrasive crystals open raw cracks on her lips and eyes after a second day without water… she tasted sour blood.

Damn me for my pride, the Negev wept softly. His failings piled on as he remembered what brought this miserable fate. He’d allowed himself a moment’s rest riding the back of his camel three nights earlier. He was delivering a daughter for her wedding. As they’d slept, the infernal beast strayed from the caravan. I was led away by Djinn, he cursed. He was sure the malevolent spirit of a dead traveler snared his animal’s harness while he’d dreamed of matrimonial feasting. He’d let his guard down with his daughter nestled in his arms, allowed himself to be rocked to sleep by the motion of his lumbering camel and the silent stars. His weakness attracted a devil.

Damn that beast. Its fly infested carcass lay in the sand. He’d awoken after falling to the ground. The sudden daylight shocked him. They’d become lost in alien territory and were utterly alone… left behind by pitiless and superstitious kin. After two days he’d taken refuge under a lone tamarisk appearing miraculously as a beacon of hope. Two days under the burning sun sapped his will to live. The previous twilight he’d slit the throat of his hobbled camel so he and his daughter could slake their unholy thirst before the burning sun returned to torment them. He prayed for forgiveness knowing only a priest could sanction the act as halal. To drink blood was haraam… a forbidden sacrilege.

I am cursed, he whimpered pitifully as the apparitions drew closer. Only the day before he’d marveled over how the desert gods had taken pity on him when he’d stumbled across the tamarisk. The miracle appeared when his heart was convinced it was their last day. He’d decided, better to sacrifice the girl rather than risk her ignoble death at the hands of another. A father has an obligation to kill his child in these circumstances, he reasoned. God might be pleased to accept his sacrifice and take the girls soul to Jannah.

He’d learned from village prophets that great men sacrificed their daughter’s rather than suffer dishonor. The stories were immortalized in scripture and myth, so they must be true. The tamarisk wood will allow me to burn her flesh, he thought. A burnt offering and the scent of fragrant smoke would please the spirits. He’d save the girl from an accursed death surely to follow if the young one outlived him. Should another tribe find the girl alive, her lingering fate at the hands of a cruel people would be worse than anything he proposed. Better we’re both dead and our bones scattered by jackals than die the slave of the dreaded Beni Skar or vicious Yal Wahiri, he thought. He shuddered over revelations of his people’s tradition of imaginative cruelty. The Negev traveler wrestled with an even greater fear, being lost in The Empty Quarter, the forbidden place where an eternity among Djinn would consign his soul to Jahannam, the fire lake of hell.

He couldn’t tell how far his lowly beast traveled during the night from the fakhadh of his caravan. This country was entirely foreign; the stars were unknown. On the first night, he’d remembered a story from his youth. He dreamed how to save his daughter from damnation. The appearance of the lone tamarisk was one of fate’s unlikely mercies. The tortured bush was rare, yet it appeared to him. As a young man learning to smoke the hookah in the souk he’d heard Hakawati telling tales of a time when tamarisk was abundant, a gift from God storytellers said.

They’d retold nomad’s stories about the desert miracle of manna. Old men spoke of a time when men walked among living gods and other immortals. In the haze of dokha smoke he’d taken the tales with a grain of salt because no such men existed, they’d long since disappeared. Perhaps dying in the incessant tribal warfare over slaves and other chattel, no one knew. History told of scattered tribes banished by the four winds.

He saw a distant sirocco driving slowly towards the falling sun. His first instinct was to fear the unknown. He had no permission to be on this land and therefore his life was forfeit. Any tribesman encountering them held the right to kill over trespass… this law was written by the eternal footprint of men. The ancient right of three days hospitality didn’t extend to a straggler with nothing to offer. Life was cruel; this was God’s will… In Sha Allah. He shielded himself from the burning sun with his thobe and prayed for a miracle. The sad traveler waited so the ancient story of manna’s miraculous divination might reveal itself. The mythical tamarisk could save his life as diviners foretold. He took shelter beneath desperately emaciated branches. The caravanner held hope the Al-Hakawati’s stories were true, and with twilight’s blush, the anticipated dew would cluster into pearls of sticky sweet manna and fall to form flat cakes dripping from the branch. Before sleeping he’d spread his cloak under the shrub to catch any bounty. He recited to his daughter ‘The tale of the manna and the tamarisk’. They fell asleep imagining a sweet rain.

Eat it quickly, father explained. The manna will disappear with first light. His guilt forced him to relive feasting on the blood of his camel. Damn the beast a thousand times. His dream wouldn’t show him when the treacherous animal strayed. It didn’t occur his tribesmen would seek to save them.

It’s God’s will, they’d conclude when his absence was noticed. In Sha Allah, they’d never interfere. I would do the same he sighed. He imagined his wife Aisha, the girl’s mother, in his brother’s tent. She wouldn’t shed a tear… that was not their way. His first thought when he awoke to his girl’s insistence was, If my child is going to die… it’s been written. He couldn’t challenge fate, but… he’d fight before he was taken to Jahannam, cursing his enemy as he fell. Footfalls echoed rhythmically off the hard packed sand. He heard lilting voices rise and fall, a cadence of no language he knew.

I’ve wandered much farther than I expected, he accepted fate meant to kill him. He cocked his ear in the direction of the approaching strangers. We are truly lost, he cried. Noora was right… the strangers had no animals. They are either poor stragglers or slavers wanting to remain unseen. The thought struck a knife through his heart. He remembered the distinctive sounds of slave trains passing through the caravanserai and the woeful lamentations of the enslaved. He sought another explanation. Animals were proof of man’s rightful claim to the land, seeing none gave him hope.

Perhaps they’re not men, Noora whispered. Father considered this anxiously. The Empty Quarter was alive with Djinn and spirits.

He wondered, Do they fear death? The caravanner struggled for relief from terror. Would they run if I take a stand? He felt the Shabaria was his only answer, but… the nomad culled his thoughts of violence as the walkers neared. He couldn’t possibly fight this many men with a knife. The blade suddenly seemed small and pathetic. The stranger’s pursued a circuitous path along the dunes until changing direction, as if capturing his scent. Damn them, he worried. They’ve seen us. The tamarisk was a beacon. He tightened the knife around his daughter’s neck, readying her. He whispered a Bedouin prayer. With my knife I wash my shame away. Let God’s doom bring what it may.

The girl collapsed in his arms. Think only of God, he rasped; stretching her neck clear of the patterned keffiyeh she wore. The strangers walked unhurried into the shallow depression where he’d taken refuge. The band of thirteen approached and paused, strangely silent for attackers. These were beings unlike any other. Father thought they could be The Messengers he’d heard about from Griot storytellers. Those tribesmen knew the desert intimately. They inscribed legends on the faces of women in blue ink. It was said women carried the legends as their burden. The secret people were described as tall, white skinned and walked with the saintly air of prophets.

The Negev looked at the strangers carefully, they fit the description exactly. Could it be them, he wondered? The wanderers shifted shape to match the color of the desert, as if caught in the sweep of an illusion. The nomad buried his face as footfalls vibrated through the sand. In Sha Allah, he wept. The knife was paralyzed at his daughter’s throat. Please don’t let them be the Ahl–a–Lard, the evil spirits of the Earth. They were the most terrible Djinn of all. He heard a voice speak softly, but remained huddled in the sand. He feared looking upon the face of a spirit. A sudden rush of terror caused him to put his thumbs into his mouth as a sign of surrender. The nomad froze as a vision filled his mind.

Don’t fear us, a sound impressed itself into his heart and he experienced enormous relief. The lost father sensed being raised from a deep well into the light. Let the child live. The voice urged him to take the knife away from his daughter’s throat.

Lift you’re face and look upon us, another voice said. Father did as he was told. He’d lost the will to do otherwise.

Am I dead? The Negev spit sand and brushed away what caked around his eyes. The Walkers encircled his wretched camp like a diaphanous cloud, dressed in the flowing black cloaks his daughter described. Are you Djinn? He heard a sound like running water he would later understand as laughter. They were taller than any men he’d seen, like spindly giants. They moved as if they shared no attachment to earth. Their bodies appeared to float above the sand unburdened by mortality. Noora raised her head and smiled, no longer under threat of the knife’s edge, relief showed in her eyes. She cleared sand from her face to marvel at what she saw.

Are they Angel’s father? Noora asked. She counted thirteen ethereal figures. The girl wondered why she could see through them. They’d formed into kindly figures she’d imagined them to be. She felt calm wrap her in a warm embrace. I think they’re Angels, the girl sighed. They can’t be Djinn Papa, her tiny voice whispered happily. They have no ogresses with them. The caravanner recalled the myth and was relieved. The girl was right… demons and dead spirits never traveled alone. These were men. He collapsed into blessed darkness.

The Negev woke minutes before dawn, he felt damp, as if he’d slept in the rain. He couldn’t see. Am I blind? He panicked. His culture was not kind to the disabled and blindness was a fate worse than death. He touched a sticky liquid pooled on his eyelids. With a sudden sucking breath he inhaled the sweet scent of aromatic honey into his lungs and tasted succulent liquid trickle onto his tongue. The grateful nomad remembered the Tuaregs tale of manna. Griot priests described the solitary tamarisk as the tree of life. In that moment he felt his cloak, wet with golden wafers, each sparkling under the starlight like gemstones cast upon his meager blanket. The droplets beaded one atop another, exactly as folklore intimated, resembling miniature loaves of unleavened bread. He was overjoyed to awake into a miracle.

Praise God. He cast around to share the moment with his daughter. He was alone. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Hunger took precedent over grief; he scooped tiny cakes into his mouth, remembering the Hakawati prophesies of manna disappearing with the first hint of sunrise. He recalled when Noora would squeal with delight if he brought sugar sweets home from the market. She’d lived up to her namesake… light of my heart. He had a vision of the girl entering Jannah. An impression in his mind formed a map of the stars showing the way out of the Empty Quarter. Dawn broke and true to prophecy the manna vanished at dawn’s suggestion of a new day. The legends were true. It’s a miracle, he wept. The Angels had taken his daughter and he rejoiced.

CHAPTER THREE

ALPHA

Gravity defying peaks rose above a shimmering mirage. This daily dance of wavering light made it impossible to see through a curtain of undulating heat. An autopoietic illusion began at the center of a broad featureless plain and would soon walk the valley floor with whirling dust dervishes before completing its trick. In an aerial feat defying all five senses, this bleak geography and the high desert sun co-opted nature to perform an impressive act of prestidigitation. With unerring chronological precision, brilliant solar radiation was dialed up towards an apex until it dissolved into a soft white explosion of undefined light. Too brilliant for the naked eye to determine with any accuracy, out of a sun that appeared to have gone momentarily supernova, was created the illusion that the Koh-I-Baba