Goetic Justice 2

"The...Ark of the Covenant?" Ryan asked incredulously. "You're telling me that the Ark of the Covenant is here, inside this building?"

"It is not merely an Ark," Azazel continued. "Unbeknownst to its mortal bearers, it was also a conduit. Just as the ring that thou bearest allows my daughter to locate thee wherever thou art in the world and to manifest at thy side, so too does the Ark serve as a direct link to Heaven. These Masons can communicate with Yahweh through it, and Angels can use it as a conduit to travel to the material realm with no need for summoning circles or complex invocations."

"Hang on, hang on," Ryan said as he tried to wrap his head around this new information. "You're asking me to destroy the Ark of the Covenant, and that will sever the Mason's link with God? What are they trying to accomplish? Why is it so important that they be stopped? I only came here to kill Carlisle."

"These Masons wish to rebuild Solomon's temple," Azazel explained. "They will place the Ark on the temple mount, and Yahweh will manifest itself on Earth. The temple will become a throne from which it will rule the world unchallenged, as it was in antediluvian times. They seek to restore Yahweh's power and to return all of creation to its sole stewardship, to rid humanity of the free will that has led them astray. It would mean the end of thy world in its current state."

"Okay, yeah, that sounds pretty fucking bad. But why do you need me to destroy it?"

"The Ark is forged by a power greater than my own. I cannot destroy it, I cannot even touch it, no demon can. Only a mortal can destroy the Ark. That is why it has been so closely guarded."

"And that's why I'm really here," Ryan mused, feeling a spark of anger rise up inside him. "Did you foresee all of this? Or did you engineer it? Have you been pulling the strings to keep me alive this whole time, just so that I could be here, today?"

This was what Carlisle had meant when he had said that Ryan was nothing more than a pawn in a larger game. Had Azazel been playing him from day one? Could all of this death and hardship have been prevented?

"You misunderstand, Ryan Cutter," Azazel replied. "I forged thy ring out of gratitude for what thou had done for my daughters. I saved thee from Haures because of the favor that was owed, a life for a life. Beyond that I have not intervened, thy path has been forged by thy will alone. Though I foresaw great change in the future, a cataclysm that would somehow involve thee, it was not until Samael appeared that I understood what was truly transpiring. Where there are Angels, there must be the Ark, and those who sought to kill thee possessed that Ark. From that moment on our fates were interwoven."

"My father would not manipulate you, Ryan," Nahash insisted. "When the Watchers fought in the rebellion, it was to free the world from the control of a capricious and tyrannical God. A God that forbade the love that my father felt for my mother, a love from which my sisters and I were born. The same love that you and I now share. They fought for humanity's right to be free to make their own choices."

"Very well, I believe you," Ryan conceded. "But before I agree to this I need to know one more thing. What is this God that everyone keeps referring to? Is it real? Did it create the world?"

Nahash looked to her father, and the great goat began to speak.

"What doth thou know of demons, Ryan Cutter? What do they feed on?"

"Energy," Ryan replied.

"And where does that energy come from?"

"From sex, sacrifice, and worship. From mortals."

"And this entity that calls itself God, does it desire worship? Does it desire faith? Does it wish for that faith to be spread around the world, to as many mortals as possible and to the exclusion of all other faiths?"

"Yes..." Ryan admitted.

"Then what makes this entity any different from a demon? Why would an omniscient and all-powerful God desire anything from you at all, least of all your worship? Why would it concern itself with such petty things as idolatry and blasphemy? What does it stand to lose if one of its worshipers should pray to a golden calf instead of it?"

"Because it would be deprived of that energy..." Ryan muttered, beginning to understand.

"Demons are gestalts, Ryan Cutter. They are born from the imaginations of humans, their thoughts and emotions bring them into being and give them their power. Ask yourself, how can such an entity have created humanity when it is humanity that brings such creatures into being? A tribe can will a guardian spirit to life, a city-state can birth a patron deity from their combined psychic energies, and a nation of people can create powerful pantheons of Gods. Most demons are just that, spirits and deities who have fallen out of favor or who have lost their worshipers. If a single God became powerful and influential enough, what steps might it take to preserve its own existence, to extend its reach?"

"So it's some kind of...super-demon?" Ryan asked.

"Yes," the beast replied, its flanging voice making his skin crawl. "Think of the feats that even a lesser demon is capable of, and now imagine what powers a demon with a million worshipers might possess, a billion. It cannot be allowed to manifest, it is far stronger than it was at the time of the rebellion, it has spread its influence to all corners of the world. It would be unstoppable..."

"Fuck it," Ryan replied with a shrug, "it's not like I can get into any more trouble."

"That's the spirit!" Azazel laughed. "I will escort you to the sanctum. Even from here I can sense its foul presence."

CHAPTER 11: STRIKE AT THE HEART

They followed behind Azazel as it barreled through the hallways, somehow able to squeeze through the tight space despite its size. They heard screams and gunfire occasionally, but they were unable to see past its bulk, only the charred and dismembered bodies that it left in its wake serving to illustrate what was going on.

It was like tailgating an angry, fire-breathing steamroller, and before very long they arrived at a large cargo lift. It seemed out of place, big enough that even Azazel could stand on it, and Ryan looked over the guard rail to see that it descended deep into the mountain. He wasn't sure how far down it went, as the only illumination came from floodlights mounted on the platform itself.

Azazel snapped its head around suddenly, looking back in the direction that they had come as if it could hear something that Ryan could not.

"I sense the presence of a Seraphim," he muttered. "It is Samael, he has returned. He knows that I am here, but he cannot sense thee, Ryan Cutter. He has come to defend the Ark. Go now, and I will stay behind to hold him off."

Ryan nodded, hitting the lever on the platform, the gears grinding as it began to slowly descend.

"Wait father!" Nahash shouted, Azazel turning to look back at her. She threw the ring, and the beast snatched it out of the air with its massive hand.

"I will return it to him, assuming that we prevail," Azazel chuckled. A brilliant light flooded the corridor above, like a sunrise was happening inside the building, and Azazel's halberd flared to life as the Watcher turned to face it. Samael's golden wings propelled him forward as he emerged from the hallway like a rocket, driving his spear towards Azazel. The beast parried it with a deafening crack and a shower of bright sparks, their duel beginning anew, the two battling figures growing smaller as the elevator descended into the unknown.

"You know, I actually get on with him a lot better than I did with my ex's in-laws," Ryan mused.

The platform rumbled beneath their feet as it crawled down the tracks, the sounds of Azazel's duel becoming fainter. After a few minutes, they could scarcely hear them, and it just kept taking the pair deeper. It made Ryan feel like he was descending into hell, he had no idea what would be waiting for them at the bottom. The silence became too much, and he felt compelled to make conversation, deciding to ask Nahash a few questions now that they had a moment of quiet.

"You mentioned your mother earlier," Ryan began, "is it alright if I ask about her?" Nahash nodded, and so he pressed on. "She was mortal, right? Like me? What happened to her?"

"She was killed in the deluge," Nahash explained.

"I'm sorry..."

"It was a long time ago," the Seirim replied with a shrug, "it isn't exactly a fresh wound.""Tell me about her," he insisted. Nahash took a moment, staring off into the distance, pulling up memories that were older than most human civilizations.

"In the antediluvian era, the period of time before the great flood, the land was presided over by Yahweh. It was an entity that had been birthed by the imaginations of a few scattered tribes, and through conversion and conquest, they had imbued it with immense power. It drove off all the other minor deities and spirits in the region, and it used its wealth of energy to turn the deserts into gardens. In exchange for their worship, it kept its followers fed and protected. There was no reason to reject the gifts that it bestowed."

"The fertile crescent?" Ryan asked.

"That is what they call the region, yes. Agriculture flourished, it was a true garden of Eden and likely the origin of that very myth. Humans did not know disease or sickness, their lifespans extended into the hundreds of years, and after a time even war became unknown to them due to the protections that Yahweh afforded. It created Angels, calling them the Watchers, who cared for their mortal wards as if they were their own children."

"That doesn't sound all bad," Ryan said, "but I get the impression that it didn't last."

"For nearly two thousand years they flourished," Nahash continued. "They begot tens of millions of offspring who all worshiped Yahweh and kept it fed with their energy. The entity was all-powerful, unchallenged, but when one achieves ultimate power and authority the only fear left is that they should lose it. The deity became capricious, petty, it wanted to micromanage the day to day lives of every one of its subjects so as to keep them in line. It handed out edicts that forbade the building of statues, for example, fearing that they might be worshiped as idols. It forbade contact with outsiders for fear that they might carry with them a foreign religion that would spread like a plague. It demanded worship in new and elaborate ways in order to maximize its take of energy, it ordered that lengthy prayers and rituals be carried out, it had monuments and temples built in its name. Like a jealous lover its attempts to control the people became stifling and overbearing, and after a time the Watchers served as little more than prison guards."

"Utopias have a tendency to go horribly wrong," Ryan commented.

"Some of the Watchers began to sympathize with their mortal wards. They saw them as sentient creatures with their own hopes and desires, beings who should be free to make their own choices."

"And that's when the rebellion began?"

"Not quite. Many of the Watchers began to desire more autonomy for themselves, too. Yahweh had created them as sentient, powerful beings, but that lust for complete control extended to their own activities as well. The humans were as their children, and the Watchers wanted to teach them, to see them grow and mature. But Yahweh feared where that might lead. Mutual appreciation sometimes blossomed into love, as was the case with my mother and father."

"How did that happen?" Ryan asked.

A smile brightened Nahash's face as she fondly recalled the events.

"Her name was Bathsua, it means daughter of abundance, and abundant she was."

"Yeah, I figured you probably took after your mother more than your father," Ryan joked.

"She had hair the color of wheat, skin as pale as the waxing moon and eyes the color of ocean surf. She was kind and patient, she had so much love to give, and so much of it was directed towards my father. The Watchers came in many strange forms, but most chose to change their appearance into something more familiar to avoid frightening the mortals. Azazel was not one of them, he saw it as deceitful. My mother saw the good in him shine through his bestial exterior, and they soon fell in love."

It should be a heartwarming story, but Ryan already knew how it ended. This was the point of no return, the spark that had ignited the fires of rebellion.

"At that point, there were hundreds of Watchers and millions of humans, so their activities went mostly unnoticed. Azazel would shirk his duties to spend time with her, he would expend energy needlessly to entertain her with magick, he would whisper the secrets of the universe to her. Yahweh was not omniscient, it did not see what Azazel was doing. The Watcher was well liked amongst his comrades, and so they didn't turn him in. The relationship went on until he had given her twelve children, Nephilim, the offspring of a Watcher and a mortal. Many other Watchers did the same, finding human wives and starting families on Earth. All that Azazel wanted to do was share with Bathsua all the wonders of the world, to give her strong and worthy children, but these were things that Yahweh forbade out of paranoia. It wanted the mortals kept ignorant and docile, it feared the creation of half-breeds that were outside of its design."

"I know what happened next," Ryan grumbled. He had already heard stories of the rebellion and the flood.

"Eventually word of this reached Yahweh. It found out that a great many Watchers had defied it, that they had taken human wives and had taught the mortals forbidden knowledge. In a fit of rage, it ordered the Watchers to kill the Nephilim, along with all those who they had taught."

"That's barbaric," Ryan muttered, "Yahweh asked them to kill their own families? Did any of them actually do it?"

"Only Samael," Nahash spat, her hatred for the Seraphim apparent. "The rest defied the decree, they took their families and fled into the desolate mountains that bordered the fertile crescent in the North West. Many mortals followed them, mostly the extended families of their wives who feared retribution, but there were many who sought to free themselves from Yahweh's rule too. There the rebel Watchers educated them in the ways of war, armed them, prepared them for what was to come. When the time was right, they marched on Eden side by side. Yahweh was powerful, but an army of two hundred Watchers, over a thousand Nephilim and a million mortals was a force to be reckoned with."

"And who won?" Ryan asked. The answer had seemed obvious at first, but Nahash and Azazel were still here while Yahweh's paradise was not.

"It was a war of such great scale and such terrible devastation that its like was not seen again until the great wars of Europe. Azazel's forces were outnumbered, but they fought harder than their foes. Love is a greater motivator than fear. At the end of their campaign, what had been a cradle for humanity had been turned to blasted wasteland, its cities razed and its land unfit to bear fruit. It mattered not to Azazel, it was almost symbolic of his desire to see humanity fly the nest, but Yahweh became enraged. Not only had they defied its will, not only had they deprived it of energy, but they had destroyed everything that it had sought to build. In one final fit of rage and in an attempt to deny Azazel his victory, Yahweh brought forth a great flood. The land was wiped clean by a tsunami the height of a mountain, friend and foe alike were drowned by the millions. The rebellion was ended, and Yahweh's reign along with it..."

"And what of your mother?" Ryan asked, looking up at Nahash to see her expression darkening.

"Drowned. My sisters and I might have been lost too had our father not been so revered by his people. They had fueled him with enough energy that he was able to save us from certain doom, and so he brought us back, conserving what little energy remained to him and entering a state of hibernation."

"That I eventually woke him from?"

"Yes," she said with a nod. "My sisters and I endured for a time, feeding on the energy of primitive tribes who revered us as spirits of the wilds. But as you well know, we were eventually forced to enter into the service of other demons. Watchers are powerful entities, very difficult to kill, but once cut off from their energy supply even they will eventually fade. Azazel may well be the last of them."

"So...who won the war?" Ryan asked.

"Nobody won," she replied bitterly. "My father did not succeed in defeating Yahweh, he could not protect the families of the rogue Watchers, and he could not save the lives of his mortal followers. In a sense, his actions freed humanity as a whole from Yahweh's rule, but it came at a terrible cost. As for Yahweh, in its paranoia, it created the very thing that it so feared. Its land and people were destroyed, in part by its own hand. The faith survived, however, preserved in the practices of a few scattered tribes who were descended from survivors of the deluge. In time they grew and spread, becoming the religions with which you are familiar today. Yahweh steadily regained its strength over the ages, but it never again sought to intervene directly in the lives of mortals."

"Until now," Ryan said.

"Perhaps," she replied with a shrug, "but I am not so sure. Maybe it is the Masons who champion Yahweh's return, and not the other way around. The myriad religions that feed it energy continue to grow and spread even in its absence. I see no reason for it to upset the status quo. It may even have learned from its experience, perhaps it no longer seeks to dominate and is content to merely be revered."

"That sounds optimistic," Ryan added, "but you'd know better than me."

The lift finally ground to a stop, and they found themselves at the mouth of yet another corridor. They stepped off the platform, Ryan shouldering his rifle. He had come here to save his own skin, but now he was tasked with saving the world.

"I just wanted to pay my rent," he muttered under his breath.

"What?" Nahash asked.

"Nothing, let's get this done."

The hallway was just as long and as featureless as the rest, their footsteps echoing as they made their way into the unknown. It was akin to being inflicted with a kind of snow-blindness, the pale, synthetic glare of the fluorescent lighting reflecting off the whitewashed walls and the polished stone floor. It all blended together. There were no side doors here, no scribes traveling to and fro and no guards patrolling. Ryan kept his rifle ready, but the corridor was so long that he couldn't even see the end of it.

They had been walking for minutes by the time something finally appeared in the distance. It was a metallic glint, a door of some kind perhaps?

A noise like a thunderclap rang out, and Ryan spun around, knocked off his feet by the force of an impact. It felt like someone had hit his right shoulder with a sledgehammer, and for a moment he was confused, dazed. When he came to he was lying on his back, staring up at the bright lights in the ceiling, the entire right side of his body aching. He turned to look at it, seeing that blood was staining his clothes, his blood...

He heard Nahash bray like a goat, heard her hooves impacting the floor nearby, but he found himself unable to move. It didn't really hurt that much, the pain was numbed by shock, but he felt as if all of the strength had been drained from his body.

Someone had shot him. But who, and from where? He feared for Nahash, she was no more bulletproof than he was. He could hear her bellowing angrily, but he couldn't rise to get a look at her. He clutched at his rifle as if it might somehow protect him, but moving his right arm sent a stab of pain shooting down its length.