Messiah: The First Judgement (Chronicles of Brothers) (39 page)

He rose.

‘For those of the Race of Men ...
if
they accept the great sacrifice.’

He took a ring of keys from his waist and unlocked the golden gate. ‘At Golgotha,’ he proclaimed, ‘all these You have secured.’

Michael strode into the throne room, his generals close behind, followed by Jether. They bowed low before Jesus.

‘Your Majesty...’ Michael removed his helmet and knelt before Jesus.

‘Lucifer is captured,’ he gasped. ‘He is in chains; his generals are incarcerated. The keys of hell are in our possession.’

Michael raised his head, catching sight of the pale horseman. He rose to his feet, fierce, and raised his sword. Jether placed his hand gently on Michael’s arm.

He shook his head.

‘He is subject to Eternal Law; he will face the great judgement,’ Jesus stated softly. ‘It is not yet time.’

Michael frowned. Jether stared at the old, wizened figure, his mouth open in wonder. ‘You have conquered death, Nazarene.’

Nisroc removed the ring of huge glowing golden keys from his waist. It was encrusted with diamonds and engraved with the seal of Pedition – Lucifer’s seal.

‘The Keys of Death and the Grave.’ Nisroc knelt and handed the keys to Jesus. As Jesus took them, the engravings transformed into the royal seal of the House of Yehovah. The pale rider bowed to Jesus, then lifted his hand in acknowledgment to Jether. Then vanished.

‘He was my mentor,’ Jether whispered in wonder, almost to himself. ‘Nisroc the Righteous. He fell with Lucifer...’

Jesus walked through the golden gates of the Black Sepulchre. Facing them, chained to the Black Necropolis, was the great golden casket with two carved gold seraphim on either side, the Ark of the Race of Men containing the title deeds to the planet earth and the solar systems.

Michael drew in his breath in awe.

‘This day justice is served in the courts of heaven,’ Jesus said quietly. ‘The Race of Men has been freed from the reign of tyranny. Commandeer the Ark, Michael.’ He turned to Jether.

‘Jether, faithful steward, prepare the chalice.’

Michael drew the sword of justice from its sheath and raised it high. ‘We return the Ark of the Race of Men to the First Heaven!’ he cried.

At the far door stood Gabriel. He bowed before Jesus.

‘Hell’s armies have surrendered, Your Excellency.’ Gabriel held out a scroll to Jesus. Jesus took it and read, then walked towards Gabriel, His hands outstretched. He clasped Gabriel’s hand in His and raised it, His voice echoing throughout hell, shaking the very core of the earth.

‘The Keys of Death and the Grave are Yehovah’s – Release the righteous dead!’

* * *

Lucifer stared out through the jagged iron bars of his holding cell in the penitentiary, at the unending millions of freed captives that marched past in triumphal procession, led by Gabriel and his conquering armies. The crimson banners of the cross, the new emblem of the First Heaven, flew high, held by the newly released prisoners, the righteous dead.

Lucifer shielded his eyes from the fierce purple light that blazed intensely like the noonday sun, illuminating every shadowy recess of the shadowed regions of the underworld.

He lay sprawled on the floor, still dreadfully weakened from his wounds, his wrists and ankles manacled with the heavy iron fetters that had once chained Jesus. The manacles tore into his bruised flesh.

He was naked, his robes and crown stripped from him, leaving only a narrow loincloth. His neck was bandaged in the silk medicinal cloth of the ancient ones, dipped in myrrh.

Humiliated before his subjects and his armies ... and before his prisoners. His hands shook with rage; his nails bit deeply into the flesh of his palms. A hundred of Michael’s elite sentinels patrolled outside, guarding the cell.

A dark, shrunken apprentice youngling, freshly released from the sweltering underground laboratories of Lucifer’s crypts, ran past the cell, shrieking dark obscenities; Lucifer’s crown balanced awry on his head. A second youngling swaggered up and down outside the cell, enveloped in Lucifer’s oversize ceremonial robes, sneering at his shackled master.

Lucifer put his head to the bars. He watched, frozen, as the sons of Noah marched past, then Abraham, the prophet Daniel, and King David. A tall, lean form lingered outside his cell. Looking down on him.

Lucifer’s face contorted into an evil snarl. He raised himself on his elbows.

‘Be gone, Baptist,’ he hissed frenziedly.

The Baptist turned his head to Lucifer, his fierce eyes blazing with righteous judgement. ‘The King of Glory has trampled on death and hell. You are
conquered
, Satan.’

From the far side of the penitentiary, through the bars, he could see the leering, mocking faces of hell’s inmates. Their voices rose in derision and his cell filled with their strident disparaging shrieks of laughter as they ridiculed their impotent king. Powerless, Lucifer’s clasped his hands over his ears to block out the derisive voices. His body trembled violently in rage.

The cell door opened, and Lucifer looked out from under his matted hair to the tall imperial form who strode over to where he lay. ‘You trespass, Nazarene!’ he seethed, struggling to raise himself to a sitting position.

The Prince of Glory stood over the prince of the damned. Imperial. Majestic.

‘Son of Destruction...’ Jesus seized Lucifer fiercely by his hair and wrenched his face upward, His own countenance black as thunder. ‘I held out to you in the First Heaven the silver sceptre of My grace, but you would not touch it.’ His voice was soft but relentless. ‘Now I hold out the iron rod of My wrath.’

Lucifer stared into Jesus’ eyes, his own face contorted with fear and loathing. He cursed slowly and deliberately in a dark, guttural evil angelic tongue, then spat in Jesus’ face.

Jesus looked at him a long while, silent. Lucifer’s spittle ran down His cheek. Then He flung Lucifer to the floor before bending and writing in the black pitch dust of the cell floor in a strange angelic script, then strode out of the cell.

Lucifer clawed his way towards the writing. Letter by letter, he read, then placed his hands over his ears. Then screamed, a blood-chilling, spine-tingling scream that reverberated through hell’s deep dark recesses. ‘You will know my vengeance, Nazarene!’

Then he fell to the floor as one dead.

Michael waited outside the cell door.

‘You have My instruction.’ Jesus’ expression was fierce; gradually His eyes softened. ‘We have one final task.’ Jesus clasped Michael’s shoulder. ‘Meet Me at the Northern Gate of Tartarus.’

Michael looked at Jesus not daring to believe. Jesus held his gaze, then disappeared into the marching crowd.

Michael removed his helmet and entered the cell. Lucifer was huddled in the far corner, banging his head in rage against the bars.

‘He has stormed my kingdom,’ Lucifer snarled. Michael looked down at him with contempt.

‘The Race of Men no longer fear me,’ Lucifer wailed, his arms clutching his torso, rocking back and forth like one demented. ‘You chose your path, brother. You reap its rewards.’

‘My dominion is stormed ... my kingdom conquered.’ Lucifer whimpered.

Michael turned to Raphael, who stood awaiting his command.

‘Deliver him, chained, to Nisroc, the keeper of death,’ said Michael. ‘He is to be incarcerated in the black sepulchre until he is summoned to the grand councils of Yehovah in the First Heaven.’ Michael turned back to Lucifer. ‘To be bound over for the First Judgement.’

* * *

Michael descended down into the lower regions of the underworld, through the nether regions, past the penetentiaries, down deep beyond the very core of hell itself, until he entered the outer boundaries of the bottomless chasm located in the very deepest parts of hell, Tartarus, its location adjacent to the Lake of Fire. Unlisted in the tenets of the title deeds. Under Yehovah’s jurisdiction.

None of the Race of Men would ever enter these austere and forbidding gates. This was the prison of the damned angelic fallen host who had left their first estate and co-habited with human women aeons past in the days of Noah – and corrupted the Race of Men. Held in chains of darkness in pits of gloom a thousand leagues beneath the Abyss.

Until the judgement.

Ahead, through the terrible unremitting gloom, Michael discerned the hundred noble angelic legions of the First Heaven that guarded Tartarus and the Lake of Fire day and night under Uriel’s command. In the distance stood a tall imperial form, waiting outside the northern-most gate to the bottomless pits of gloom. The entrance to Tartarus – through the lowest shaft of the Abyss.

The black stone was riddled with orange cracks from the blazing furnace that raged a thousand leagues below them. Uriel stood silently at attention, his legion bowed before their King. Jesus nodded and Uriel walked over to the huge circular lock that had been carved out of the colossal granite boulder a mile wide. Reaching down, he placed the enormous key to the shaft of the Abyss into the lock. Ever so slowly, it started to turn. A hundred angelic warriors grabbed the iron rivets of the boulder, pitting their great strength against the cavernous door. Slowly it opened.

Billowing black smoke erupted from the shaft entrance of the blazing furnace. The warriors were momentarily knocked off their feet by the blast of heat from the flowing river of fire and lava – the molten core.

Gradually, the smoke from the twisting shaft thinned out. The walls of the caverns glowed red hot with deadly coals and the air reverberated with the clamouring screams of the incarcerated.

‘I curse Yehovah! I curse Christos!’ A thousand whispering, vile obscenities grew in intensity. ‘...curse His holy presence.’

Jesus raised His hand and immediately the blaspheming faded except for the sound of one lone voice from a thousand leagues below, faintly audible above the roar of the blazing furnace.

‘Christos!’ The tortured scream drew nearer, carried towards them on the smoke. ‘...have mercy on my tormented soul.’

Jesus walked over to the entrance until He stood directly in the path of the twisting blazing furnace. Untouched.

‘Christos...!’ The chilling scream pierced the air.

He closed His eyes.

‘Zadkiel!’ He cried, ‘The Son of Man commands you – Come forth!’

And so it was that day that I heard Lucifer’s agonized scream of defeat. The Son of God, the Son of Man, in all His glorious and terrible majesty – the eternal Christ, the Messiah – had entered his hellish domain and conquered his kingdom. It was a terrible, blood-curdling scream. Lucifer understood his unparalleled folly: that he had been the pawn to crucify the Prince of Glory. That by the shedding of His undefiled blood, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Father incarnate made flesh, had opened a doorway to the Race of Men that they could be reconciled to the great Creator of their soul, Yehovah. Lucifer’s dominion had been stormed; his kingdom had been conquered – forever ... at Golgotha.

And so he screamed.

No one will ever know what was written in the dust that day.

No one will ever know what transpired in that moment between the Prince of Glory and the prince of the damned ... only that after it occurred, Lucifer harboured an insatiable vengeance against the Nazarene and the sons of the Race of Men.

Chapter Forty-one

Jotapa

The vast desert sky was still strangely crimson. Jotapa sat outside the tent, her face heavily veiled in mourning. Only her eyes, red and swollen from weeping, were visible.

Ayeshe placed a bowl of steaming lamb’s meat before her.

‘You must eat, princess,’ he said quietly.

Jotapa shook her head vehemently. She clutched Ayeshe’s hand in hers so tightly that her rings bit into his fingers. Wincing in pain, he very gently removed his hand and covered her tenderly with a soft blanket.

‘Please, princess,’ he pleaded, ‘eat.’

Jotapa waved him away.

‘We have no victory to tell my father of – just a brutal tale of the Hebrew’s torturous, bloody death. And worse, his tomb desecrated, his body stolen...’ She collapsed in desperate sobbing until her head finally dropped onto her chest, her eyes closed in exhaustion.