Kingdom of Man

These are my thoughts as I sense a presence beneath the fog of the forest. Long have I listened, but this thing is different, and it is no making of ours. The trees tell me of a child. It has come from beyond the land, with no roots to follow, and no tales to whisper among the leaves.

How then comes this thing to my forest? Why then should I wake to it?

The kin of my forest reside in harmony. Flesh rends flesh, blood stains soil, instinct supplants life, and they pass the days in their way. Each is born anew to grow as they are wont to do. None wander far, and none stay the same. They whisper of shapes, growing limbs, and scales to fur to feathers to flight.

This has always been the way of things, as Enki commanded.

From whence, then, does this child roam? The tree of serpents holds all tales but none has known this one before this very hour. It must perish as all lost creatures in my forest do. Strength is then formed from sacrifice and new growth is then born from my feast. Not even the young are spared from this.

Thus, I am wakened.

May the great ones guide me as I pray to call the breaking of the bonds of old and shaping of things once gone. Earth now rend and rise as spires to those dark heavens. Kin of my blood I command you to take flight and soar until this time has passed and peace comes once again.

I command you now forest to be my ribs, my bones, my stone. Great rivers run through my roots. Fire be quenched to the beating heart of my eternal flame.

Soil now shed from my shaping form as once you were called to enshrine me below. Breath of life I command to raise within me. Fire of heart I command to light once more.

There is a coldness in the warmth. A growth that is not the blood of my blood, nor flesh of my flesh. This thing does barely draw breath. Its thoughts do not touch my own.

Have I lost the child? The making that is not our own? Please do not let it be far gone.

The tempest rises all around and I am renewed, flame spouting forth to light the darkness. My bones protest their fresh hewing. Anger, betrayal, fear, my children circle around me in their new exile, screeching cries, begging to return to their mother’s grove.

Great tears flow from me as rivers falling to the ground. Then there is a sound. My claws dig into the loosened dirt. The new thing stirs again. Scrabbles in the darkness. Itches of thought touch my own once more. It lives, but where?

This child from a place unknown, where have you gone? I feel a mound amongst the earth and wrench it free.

The breathing of the child is slow, and it grows cold. It is only small motions of the mind now. Scribbling becomes a spark, a spark kindling no more.

It dreams. Oh, Enki its dreams!

Not the gasping end of unformed things, but the greater dreams of my kin. What form of a child may see as us? Will this too perish to the ways? What may be lost?

Oh, Enki in your wisdom I beg you to give over a lick of your flame to ignite once again what has newly faltered. Oh, mothers of my own, find mercy in my heart and shed your tears upon this fallen form. Winds of my ancestors, fill those timid lungs once more so they may know your mercy and I may feast on the living thoughts of this new thing.

Be still.

My lord Enki?

Be still and rest your fire. This child I sent to you. Hunger not.

Oh Lord of all making, forgive me. My heart has been shaped too hot and too eager.

Be still and listen. You are shaped by my glory, as are all things new and old.

I stand, spanning great, tipped wings as my mothers once did and as my shunned children now do in their aimless flight. I heave at the wet firmament below, tearing it asunder and casting hard stones into the void. I rest the child beneath me upon the newly tilled soil. It rises. It cries out, a shattering wail among the stillness of my making. My roar joins in harmony, and our thoughts run together as one.

My winged children flee, afraid of this new song. Anger flies with them and I hear Enki once more.

Now, rise old mother, and lead this child to glory. I name him Alulim. His lands will be mine own. I set now mother against child, Nehushtan against Seraph, old ways against new.

I tear asunder what was once made, as I am the maker of all things, and this is my will. Rise now, host most high of all serpents, and guardian of the first king of men.

I name you Ashanai, and upon you, I will build my throne.

--

“The Eridu come, Lord.” A sharp salute follows, and the soldier stands firm, spear to forehead, awaiting a response. I acknowledge his formality with a slight nod and he lowers the spear, resting its hilt on the hard earth.

“Their number?”

“Four score, lord, all mounted.”

A sour expression threatens to breach my tight lips, but I hold my discipline. Their numbers have increased by half in only a few seasons.

“All chieftains?” I ask.

“Yes, my lord -- many yet unnamed, but the banners fly.”

“And Elloros?”

“His banner flies with them, my lord.”

“Then my brother has vowed his oaths, and the Gibborim are all that remain in opposition, it would seem.”

The soldier is clever enough not to respond. My enmity with my brother’s tribe is well-known, and not to be spoken of. In the moment of silence, my mind wanders to the Gibborim, as it has often of late. The heavenly giants have never been of aid to my people, and my pleas to them have gone unanswered. They hide away their gifts behind towering walls, but they too may soon find themselves in a precarious enough position. My enemy fears no battlements, and her biting flame may well burn divine flesh just the same as that of common men.

I raise a hand to block the sun’s sharp rays from my eyes, and I scan across the shimmering sands that span out in front of our camp, trying to catch sight of what the spotters have seen from their vantage.

In the years since tales of Alulim’s kingdom first reached our lands, his influence has grown beyond measure, coalescing neighboring tribes by force or by willful submission. Many simply fell in worship as the great serpent claimed the skies, casting lightening and spouting flame in her wake. Those tribes which resisted found little success in the end and great examples were made of any who dared challenge their new ruler. More than one chieftain tasted their last air in a long flight toward an unforgiving rest at their own men’s feet.

Still, none knew from whence he came, or of what clay he was formed. His kingdom seemed to have risen from shadows and dust far to the west. Ancient to the world, but new to the tribes of Sumer. A serpent carrying him to unchallenged glory.

“This will be no negotiation,” I spit the last word, the taste of it coming like bitter fruit to my mouth. “Gather the prophets. We should make ready our terms.”

“Our terms, lord?”

I look out across the expanse at last catching sight of a growing shadow in the distance. No plumes of dust follow it. No feet or hooves touch upon the earth there. Alulim proceeds his chieftains, it would seem.

“Our terms for surrender. Today we join the Eridu empire, and we do so without paying entry with the blood of our sons.”

The soldier is stricken pale, his spear falling forward almost escaping his grasp before he snaps back and raises it again to his forehead. “Yes, my lord.”

I spare him no attention as he runs off to fetch the sages. They will have the words prepared already. This was foretold, as surely as was the other path we could have gone. A path paved with great rivers of blood and burned earth and the dying gasps of our people. A path I have seen all too well. It shall be a vision foresworn but never forgotten.

No, it is better that we join with Alulim than be dragged beneath his talons. Better a slave to the god of the skies than a leader of the dead down below.

“Lower the banner,” I call out. “Let us welcome our host.”

The time has come to kneel in supplication before our one king.

--

Our war against the Gibborim is short-lived, even with their scores of Seraphim. Daughters of Ashanai are no threat to the mother of hosts. They fall in her presence, some overcome with shame, dashing themselves against the rocks, others gnashed and torn between her sharp teeth and talons. None escape her fury.

Alulim, protected by the holy ward of Enki, proves impervious to the might of the giants. Great hurled boulders burn to molten droplets, raining down from the sky to scorch the earth below, as Ashanai breaths her wicked flames to shield her mounted charge. Upon her wings our victory soars, and below, in her shadow, my men prepare for what must come next.

Elloros was struck down in the first assault. His foolish pride was his undoing. Bolstered by the faith of Alulim, he forgot his own mortality, and the sand drank red. His sons then looked to me for guidance, and for that, I slew them myself. There is no place for uncertainty amongst the unity of our tribes. Not when gods wage war through the acts of men, and not when our king demands this day’s dark work be done.

I take the remainder of Elloros’ men as my own and lead them with mine around the northern cliffside. It is a dangerous path, but one less open to assault from above, and we are a people accustomed to such precipices. The desert does not forgive a misstep.

Ashanai makes another swooping pass high above, and a large portion of unseated wall and stone comes tumbling down through our midst. A dozen of what were once Elloros’ men are sent to a fiery death in the valley below, leaving half of my force cut off behind serpent fire that now runs down the cliffside in rivers.

Ashanai’s vengeance is unleashed in torrents upon the angelic forces still clinging to their fortress and flows now as liquid stone, carving through man and mountainside alike. With less than a quarter of my own men remaining and few of Elloros’ troops to aid us, we make entry through the rear of the angelic keep.

We are met with a vision of nightmares. Gibborim, some that would have stood thirty feet high, now lay stacked beneath a feasting Ashanai. Her body drips droplets of fire and blood, smelling of a fresh sacrifice. Some of the fallen still make motions as if to rise, while others mouth soundless words. Alulim stands tall upon her back, his helm removed, his pitch-black hair flowing like a streamer in the spoiled air.

He casts his eyes around the ruin, at last landing them on mine. I lower my head in deference. After a moment with eyes closed and arm across my chest, I return my gaze to him. He nods, and I set about my work. I know what I seek, and I have been told where to find it.

The sword of Azaz’el burns brightly in the abandoned catacombs below the keep, lighting the darkness of long chambers with its blue-burning blade. Forged by hellfire by one of the first fallen, it holds a strength that no man-forged metal may ever best. Even though the inner sanctuaries of the keep were abandoned in defense of the outer walls, and the catacombs seem less fortified still, I am cautious with my men.

The first of my guard find the blade undefended, but in his haste to make away with it, he slices a hand down the side of it and he is unmade like wool unraveling in the wind. The next moments are precious, and I move swiftly. As the blue flame licks at the fallen man’s shattered remnants, spreading across the floor to lap him up, a form begins to take shape in the spiraling rivulets of bitter smoke.

“Azaz’el is revealed!” I cry out to my men, as I reach to my side gripping for a bladder of lamb’s blood. My men cast spears and slings through the forming demon, spreading its mist wide, forcing it to draw back upon itself in vaporous waves.

My second, Calen, is less cautious than am I. He rushes forward, spreading virgin lamb’s blood across the blue flame, quenching it in a sort of winding path toward the fallen sword. The smoke coalesces and surges toward him, but by then I have my own bladder open and keep the demon at bay with quick splashes of the sticky liquid.

Calen drenches the sword, and the flames throughout the chamber falter. The smoke disperses, and the blade is ours. He lifts it, carefully holding it by the end of the hilt, far out to his side as he slowly steps toward me. The sharp edge of the blade hums through the air as if slicing the very wind itself, even as it drips crimson drops to the stone below.

The effort of the task seems more than it should be for Calen. The man’s face grows tight and pale, and I know the cause of it is more than the weight of the metal in his hand.

He staggers with exhaustion by the time he has reached me and falls to his knees at my feet, the sword clattering to the stone beside him, carving out a notch where the tip strikes. The blade has drained him almost to the end, but he will recover in time.

I bind the hilt in virgin wool, soaking it with what remains in my uncorked bladder, and we make our way out of the keep. My men and I trade off the burden of the sword, and though it is only a short trek from the depths of the keep back to the courtyard, we are all drenched in sweat from the effort. The blade flickers now, threatening to reignite, as the blood and the wool dry and begin to let off whisps of steam.

“Alulim!” I call up, once I have seen him. “We cannot hold this charge!”

Ashanai lowers her head toward me, the massive trunk of her neck snaking around the courtyard to face us.

Her voice enters my mind, “What treachery is this? You would raise a demon to slay my son?”

“Alulim!” I cry out once more, as her jaws snap at the air in front of me. “My Lord!”

Alulim rises over her glowering eyes, taking footing upon her crown, and he commands me, “Give this demon blade over, brother of Sumer. It does not belong in the hands of one such as you.”

The blade burns brighter now, even under the rays of the sun and amidst the fiery light of Ashanai’s glare. She lowers within a hand’s span of me, and I lift the weapon, casting it upward to land at Alulim’s feet. Ashanai flinches at the touch of it, faltering back from where my men and I stand, stumbling into one of the remaining walls and sending it scattering stones out into the emptiness beyond.

“Be still, old mother,” Alulim shouts, his voice carrying across the distance, even as the great serpent writhes and moans beneath him. In a quick motion, he raises the blade and it sparks to life, blazing a blue arc against the golden skies. He brings it down, tip toward the ground, and shoves it deep into the flat of the scales between Ashanai’s eyes. The blade plunges cleanly in, as if her unbreakable scales were nothing more than plates of clay.

Her cry is deafening, and the force of it throws me tumbling through the air. I land on Calen, and feel that he has fallen on others, my men all tossed aside like starlings in a baleful wind. By the time I have recovered, it is over.

Ashanai’s writhing is quickly spent, and her motionless form now lies there entwined amongst her children's bodies and the fallen Gibborim, her final thrashings having cast them all about her.

Alulim walks down the length of her, blade in hand but no longer burning. The serpent's blood has quenched the demon’s lust for now. He shows no emotion. He pauses for no sorrowful mourning at her falling. Instead, he finds footing in front of her chest, then plunges the blade in once more.

Gouts of liquid fire run out, and Alulim releases the hilt of the sword, losing it to the torrent. The fire spreads below Ashanai, forming a pool around her as it bites into the stone below. A small hole forms and then widens where the serpent fire burns down into the catacombs. The opening spreads, and the fallen hordes are consumed and drug down to the depths along with her.

This fire will run to the pits below the spring of all wells before it finds rest amongst the damned.

His work done, Alulim turns to me and my handful of remaining men. As he approaches, we fall to bended knee and await what comes next.

“Rise, brothers of Sumer,” he commands. “Enki sent me not to heal the world, but to rend it asunder. To cast serpent against mother, and Nephalim against man. This day I have cast out a great demon, binding him to the blood of all serpents. In Enki’s name, we stand, formed in the clay of his image, may his kingdom last forever.”

--

We build our castle upon this mound, casting the old bricks and ruins into the pit until it can hold no more. The wailing of the host is lost after a time, but I fear it will return as all dark things must one day do.

I have seen the other path. A path paved with great rivers of blood and burned earth and the dying gasps of our people. A vision foresworn but never forgotten.