Marduk paced back and forth in a rage. He glanced between the empty spot, his soldiers and those of Lokutis, weighing his options.
“Very well!” Marduk boomed. His voice echoed up and down the valley, shaking the rocks. “If it will get me out of here sooner, I will tell you.” There was a moment of silence. He paced closer. “I intend to permanently enter the Plane of Shar-On, the Plane of Light.”
Another moment of silence as the gods faced off.
Lokutis blinked and shook his head as if to clear it. “Come again?”
“You heard me. I intend to use the Mizkift to open a portal into the Plane of Shar-On and enter.”
Lokutis once again shook his head in disbelief, but on a grander scale. “What? Are you mocking me?”
Marduk stood with arms crossed, unresponsive.
“Nobody enters the Plane of Light! It is a dimension of energy where Mizkift goes when sufficiently energized. That is all.” Lokutis scoffed. “The only ones who believe otherwise are the pharaohs who have some notion that, after a lifetime of ingesting the cake and saturating their flesh with it, they will wake up there after death. And I know what you think of the pharaohs.”
“You don’t exactly dissuade them from that belief, Lokutis, do you?”
Lokutis feigned shock. “Of course not. Who am I to trample all over somebody else’s dogma? It would be bad for business.”
“Bad for business indeed,” Marduk sneered. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re willing to make an exception in my case.”
“The Egyptians do not demand this much all at once! It is suspicious!”
“This much Mizkift is necessary to force a doorway open. And as I pointed out, if I am successful, you’ll never see me again. There’s as good a reason as any to bring it back now.”
“Even if you were to force your way into the dimension, assuming you didn’t blast yourself out of existence in the process, what do you expect to find there?”
“A new beginning,” Marduk said solemnly. “An escape.”
Lokutis stared. “From what? Reality? All you have to do is mix a little Mizkift with Nektar to make Ambrosia to do that. You don’t need nine pillars of it.”
“I do not intend to hide in a drunken stupor, but to literally escape this world.” Marduk took to pacing again like a caged animal.
“Another world?” Lokutis scoffed. “You wish to conquer another world? Then invade one of the sanctuaries of the Elohim. Again, a feat that does not require a mountain of highward firestone.”
Marduk stopped his pacing. He did not respond. Rather, he looked sidelong at Akahamet and to his own herald. Something about Marduk’s manner struck Lokutis as strange. Over the ages he had come to expect certain behavior in his dealings with Marduk as normal: pomposity, arrogance, bravado, megalomania. The sort of fare that afflicted all the gods. The sort of conduct from which Lokutis himself was not immune.
But now, there was sincerity in his voice, as well as something else. That same something that was in Akahamet’s voice when his advisor had spoken of the approaching storm, his misgivings of the meeting place, the appearance of the sphinx, and the mention of the madman, Noam, building his ark on dry land. It wasn’t just concern—it was fear. But this was coming from a god.
Lokutis narrowed his eyes and chewed on his lower lip. The horizon behind Marduk’s head had become deep purple, with occasional streaks of lightning. His crimson host shifted uneasily, glancing nervously at their god, and Lokutis could sense his people were doing the same.
He turned to his trusted advisor. “Give us a moment, will you Akahamet?”
Akahamet blinked in surprise at the request, but dutifully bowed at the waist and withdrew a respectful distance. Marduk likewise made a sharp gesture to his herald, who seemed pleased to put distance between himself and the feuding gods.
“A sanctuary?” Marduk said at last, bitterly. “One of the hidden realms created for those Nephilim beloved of Jhove? That is precisely the last place I should go. Jhove perceives you and me as monsters. Freaks! Mistakes!” He allowed a moment for the words to bite, and they did. Then he said, “But the Elohim, the Shining Ones, Jhove had pity on them even though they had the same Grigori fathers and mortal mothers as we. And why? Because they were beautiful? Bha! Should I force my way into one of their kingdoms hidden behind walls of air, Jhove would strike me down in a heartbeat. No Lokutis, I intend to hide this face in a realm even Jhove cannot reach.”
At Marduk’s words, Lokutis remembered the dreams from earlier that morning, followed by the memory of an angry man beating him with a switch.
Fatherless bastard
. So many accusations. Then a woman, throwing herself across his bleeding body, taking the lashings and pleading for the man to stop. Yes, the Nephilim, the Elohim, they were mistakes. Never meant to exist. Incomprehensible creatures, born different, children of the Grigori, the Watchers. These were servants of Jhove who were sent to teach mankind, but instead ended up falling from grace and being banished for lying with mortal women.
Lokutis closed his eyes and rubbed his temple. The image of the woman being strangled by the angry man wouldn’t leave his thoughts. He rubbed harder when the memory turned to the woman’s eyes going lifeless, her head lolling to one side. He opened his eyes and stopped the rubbing. It wouldn’t pay to show signs of weakness before his fellow god. Even as he told himself this, though, he thought of the angry man brushing a spider into a jar, and tossing it away. Somehow that image, the hairy creature in its glass vessel, was worse than the memory of his mother dead at her own father’s hands.
What Marduk desired was not unfounded, so Lokutis was stern but not unsympathetic when he said, “The Plane of Shar-On is not a place one can go to. If you truly are looking for a change of habitat, then you should invade a sanctuary. If for no other reason than because it is our birthright. We belong there just as much as the Shining Ones.”
Marduk ground his teeth. “I have reason to believe Jhove will lay waste to this world he created, to wipe it clean of all the mistakes that populate it. Just as he did to this accursed place eons ago.” He thrust his finger at the giant tower that loomed in the background. Its uppermost portions had become veiled by heavy grey clouds. “But it won’t be a localized event this time. It will be the entire world. And I intend to be gone from here, and not in an Elohim fishbowl, either, where it will be easier for Jhove to see that he missed one of his mistakes.”
“Who is paranoid now? Wherever did you come by such prophecy?”
“The signs are all around you, Lokutis, if only you would look. Mostly it says so in the stars. You would know that if you spent some time outside that cave of yours. Even the fool villager crafting that giant ark outside this valley knows it.”
It was Lokutis’ turn to pace.
“Really Lokutis,” Marduk growled, no longer staring at the empty space where the pillars of Mizkift had stood. His voice was now full of soothing and rationale, at odds with the sweat that started to bead on his pate. “If I am wrong, then I will destroy myself in a blaze of white Mizkift-light. If I am successful, then I will enter either an airless field of energy and perish, or enter a new world and you will never see me again. In any case it will be a boon to you. My empire will need a god.”
A bead of sweat fell from his temple. His smile was strained.
Lokutis’ eyes narrowed as he returned the big man’s gaze, weighing all the information and possibilities. The sky was now dark and distant thunder rumbled. The gentle desert breeze was now a full-grown gale.
“Liar!” Lokutis at long last cried, stabbing an accusing finger at Marduk. “Surely you must take me for some kind of fool with this preposterous excuse! I still say you are up to no good...and in this world, not the Plane of Shar-On!”
Marduk dropped all pretenses of calm and civility. “You miserable wretch! You had this planned all along, didn’t you? You never had any intention of handing over the Mizkift! You mean to take my gold by force, don’t you?”
“Don’t change the subject!” Lokutis shouted. “This is about you taking my God-Cake and using it against me!”
A shouting match ensued and they gestured furiously at one another. Their respective camps held hands firmly to sword hilts and their eyes flicked from one enraged god to the other.
Inevitably, somebody drew a sword, setting into motion a scraping chorus of metal drawn from sheaths on all sides.
“Lokutis, this is your last chance. Relinquish the God-Cake or I will squeeze from you the knowledge of how to retrieve it myself.”
“I’d like to see you try!” Lokutis shot back.
Marduk raised his wrists and banged together the metal jewelry.
At the sound, the women slaves tugged apart their shackles, made space between themselves, and commenced to whirl the chains above their heads. The once demure eyes were now intense and focused.
Lokutis bared his teeth at these women, who, as it turned out, did not have the hard bodies of dancers, but the hard bodies of warriors.
Marduk’s force now stood one hundred twenty to Lokutis’ one hundred.
“I thought you might try something,” Lokutis sneered. He snapped his fingers as he had done earlier to drive the sphinx away.
The earth rumbled and shook, and outside the ring of columns, forms rose from the ground. They spilled sand and dirt from their bodies. They were pale and dirty giants, bipedal like a man, and stood another man’s height above Marduk. Their limbs were long and deformed with gnarled muscles. Many were bow-legged or hunched, others better formed, but all bearing the heavily muscled bodies of labor and the scars of battle. Naked, hairless, their heads were oblong. Their mouths hung open and trailed strands of drool. These creatures numbered ten and circled the meeting place, encompassing Marduk’s forces—including his warrior women.
After a dramatic pause, Marduk spoke. “You can call upon all the help you want, but you and your menagerie of freaks will not keep me from what is rightfully mine.”
Lokutis tsked. “Come now, is that any way to talk about your Nephilim brothers?”
“I no more claim these creatures as brother than the Elohim claim you and me. And I tell you, Jhove is coming soon to cleanse this world of such as these,” Marduk responded.
“Enough of that ridiculous story! It is obvious you have treachery in mind!” Lokutis gestured toward the warrior women.
Marduk clenched his fists, drew a deep breath and with his unnatural voice rising as he spoke, shouted, “Give me the firestone you insolent little
bastard!
”
Lokutis froze at the word. His face contorted into a caricature of itself
―
fangs grew from his upper jaw and his eyebrows turned into bat wings above slitted animal eyes blazing lavender. A shimmering aura surrounded his body that seemed to melt his clothes away and his stature tripled in size, becoming a muscled giant. Great bull horns sprouted from his head, toppling his ornate helm, which fell to the sand. He held out fists engulfed in balls of purple flame.
“How dare you talk to me like that!” he growled in an otherworldly voice.
No sooner had Lokutis started his transformation than Marduk commenced one of his own. He too grew in stature, but not as much as Lokutis. His fangs lengthened, and his eyes melded into one great cyclopean fireball. He snatched the serpent shaped bracelet from his wrist and made a flinging gesture. It elongated in his hand and turned into a fiery whip.
“Your true form does not frighten me! Jhove will not have to wipe you from the face of the earth, for I will!”
“Woe!” cried a new voice. “For the hour is at hand!”
The opposing forces turned in the direction of the voice.
There, sitting on top of a column, was the sphinx. Its head rotated oddly.
“Woe to the beasts, the creeping things, and the birds of the air!”
“I told you, Lokutis, your monsters will not stop me!” Marduk exclaimed, shaking the whip at his adversary. It writhed like a living thing, throwing off sparks.
Lokutis scowled. “Deception does not become you. That is one of your agents, sent from the start to distract me.”
“Son of Ea,” the winged creature said to Marduk, who started at being addressed as such. “Your time has come! Hewn down by the messenger you shall be! There is not even hope of resting among the stars!”
Marduk turned to Lokutis. “What trickery is this? First you make Mizkift disappear without the aid of a capacitor, now you know the true name of my father?”
“Long wanderings!” The beast now turned to Lokutis. “Slow fade! Power drained from your heel! The green man will cut you down and send you to the venomous cave. Only in the last days will you be set free again, just long enough to be destroyed by the bridge-god on the rock of Ragnor! Woe!” The sphinx took flight and flew away from the column in swooping arcs, down the valley, to the scene unfolding there.
The mouth of the valley had become a swirling mass of thunderheads, a vortex crisscrossed with lightning. Something that looked like an ocean of water and light was gurgling forth from this tunnel as from an overturned urn, splashing and foaming its way down the valley, breaking against the rocks and hurling loose boulders in front of it.
Wading through this miasma was a titanic figure around whose ankles the water broke. Humanoid in form, it stood almost as tall as the nearest cliffs and light radiated from its body. It wore richly decorated armor, and girded about its waist was a broad belt with a sword in its scabbard. The light-being grasped in both hands a scythe, which it rested on one shoulder as it strode forward. Spreading from its back were great wings opening and closing like respirating lungs. These looked for a moment like clouds, but soon coalesced into solid pinions.
The first impression was of sheer size, a column of light, radiating mist. But the being’s head was what riveted one’s attention, and inspired terror.
Whereas its body glowed, its head was absolutely ablaze with fierce lightning. It had not one but four faces, rotating above its shoulders like the sphinx’s. The first face was nominally human, with eyes, nose and mouth. The next was a bird of prey, with piercing eyes and a raptor’s hooked beak. Another rotation revealed a snorting bull, and the final, a roaring lion.