Rise of the Fallen (11 page)

One of the challenges he was going to face was the fact that many of the Fallen in this hemisphere knew who he was, which would bring attention to his charge, the man he was now commissioned to protect. The more he considered this likelihood, the more he realized that he might be Carter’s biggest liability. He would have to keep his distance from the man and remain undetected by any of the Fallen until he could figure out what was actually happening.

It would probably also mean translating to physical form, where he could disguise himself from the Fallen much easier, although there were always risks with translation. Translating to human form dulled the senses, reduced speed, and increased the threat of dissolution due to an unseen attacker. On top of that, Validus was skilled at translating weapons upward, not his physical body downward. The level of concentration was considerably higher. Some guardians had mastered it, but it was not typical for a warrior.

It was five in the morning in Rivercrest, the perfect time to do a little investigating before getting back to headquarters and transferring leadership.

The Carter residence was near the outskirts of town in a moderate ranchstyle home. Validus took a few minutes to reconnoiter the residence, making sure there were no Fallen around before he stepped through the back wall of the home and into the living room. Validus felt a little odd. For the last eighty years he had been analyzing enemy forces, strategizing battle plans, and commanding over seventy-five thousand warriors. Now he was investigating the trinkets of one lone family in the plains of Kansas.

Validus walked toward a wall where some pictures hung. Drew Carter was
a handsome young man. In one of the pictures, Carter was sitting on a couch and his mother had her arms wrapped around him from behind. She was smiling from ear to ear. The sparkle in her eyes made Validus smile. Her love for her son was obvious. As Validus stared at her deep-blue eyes, something shivered inside him. Memories of the past tugged at his mind, but he didn’t know why.

He moved on and saw two men in the lives of Drew and his mother—an older picture with one man and a more recent photo with another. He recognized the eyes of war in both. There was a military history in the family, and Validus felt an instant connection.

He stepped through one of the bedroom doors. The soft sounds of slumber from a sleeping woman filled the room. He paused to gaze at her. Aside from her physical beauty, Validus sensed purity in her spirit, and yet Ruach Elohim was not with her. It saddened him.

He materialized through the wall into Drew’s bedroom, but his charge was not there. He quickly made note of the items and photos in the room—football, guns, camping, girls, college, Mustangs, weights, and two men, a father no longer in his life and the other probably his mother’s boyfriend.

“Where would a nineteen-year-old be at 5:30 in the morning?” he asked himself.

Validus wondered if Carter was a prodigal child, prone to parties and late nights. He pitied the mother and wondered if his mission was going to involve watching another young man methodically destroy his life by becoming enslaved to the wiles of the Fallen. There truly was nothing new under the sun.

At one point in his life Validus had nearly given up on humanity, which caused him to marvel at the limitless grace of Elohim. Generation after generation he watched countless lives being destroyed by the tactics of the Fallen. But even the propagators of evil paid a price.

Validus scoffed at the foolish theories of mankind, thinking they were on a path of evolution toward godhood. If only they knew—sin produced exactly the opposite.

9
 

2348 BC

In spite of their looming fate, much to Validus’s surprise, some Fallen were so unable to refrain from utter indulgence in the rampant evil of humanity that General Tarsis was vexed with keeping his army focused.

One day Validus was watching the tactics of Tarsis when one of his captains could not be found.

“Guldomak, where is Tulgard?” Tarsis glared at his first commander, his fingers massaging the pommel of his sword. “I wanted a report of the last supply run an hour ago. Where is it?” he screamed.

Guldomak cringed. “I will find him and kill him myself, my lord.”

“Don’t kill him, you imbecile. Put him at the front of our next attack with your sword at his back. And if you can’t keep control of your men, you will be next.”

Guldomak’s eyes narrowed and his face contorted into a scowl. He left the presence of Tarsis and yelled for a contingent of warriors to find Tulgard.

Validus had seen enough and was about to check on Commander Danick when one of the Fallen ran to report to Guldomak.

“Commander, I know where Tulgard is.”

“Bring him to me now! If he isn’t here within the next two minutes, I will send him to the Abyss myself!”

The warrior hesitated. “I think you should come and see this for yourself, sir.”

Guldomak’s eyes turned red with fury. “What is going on, Poxel?”

The warrior looked down at the ground. “Captain Tulgard has been inciting and participating in the murder, perversion, and cannibalism of the Gordorites at Kish, my lord.”

“We have no time for pleasure now. That will come once we eradicate Jorill and his despicable warriors. Find Tulgard and bring him to me,” Guldomak ordered.

“That’s just it, my lord. We can’t bring him. No one dares go near him.”

Guldomak drew his short sword as though he needed to kill something to keep his anger in check. He glared at the retreating warrior. “Why not?” he asked slowly.

“Because he’s changed,” Poxel said quickly. “He’s … he’s … you just have to see, my lord.”

Validus was now as curious as Guldomak. The other angels in the Hall of Vision abandoned their portals to watch Validus operate his. Some of the angels took to the air so they could see his portal.

“Why don’t you just put it on the dome?” Persimus asked as he turned to see the gathering crowd.

“You remember the last time I did that when we were watching the Fallen. I don’t need any more encounters with either archangel.”

Persimus nodded and refocused on the portal.

Validus followed Guldomak as Poxel and four other Fallen escorted him to the outskirts of Kish, near the camp of the Gordorites. The closer they came, the more Validus felt a knot tightening in his stomach. It was impossible for him to watch the unmitigated evil abound without becoming furious. Such things stayed with him for weeks. Persimus put a hand on Validus’s shoulder.

Fortunately, the posse of Fallen did not enter the camp but instead detoured to the hills just above the encampment. They came upon a cave, and Poxel stopped. He turned to face Guldomak, fear in his eyes.

“He’s in there, sir.”

“Bring him out.” Guldomak drew his sword. The command of Tarsis to spare Tulgard’s life appeared irrelevant. Blood was in Guldomak’s eyes.

Poxel shook his head. He and the three other warriors stepped backward. “I would rather die by your sword.”

“Aack! Weaklings!” Guldomak lunged at Poxel and grabbed his neck. He threw him toward the cave opening. “Bring him to me!”

Poxel stumbled backward just as a deep, guttural growl rumbled from the cave. He clutched at the rocks beside him to keep from falling into its mouth,
but it was too late. A bloodcurdling screech erupted from the bowels of the cave, and a black mass lunged from the darkness toward the demon warrior. Rows of six-inch, razor-sharp fangs collapsed around the torso of Poxel. The beast shook him, smashing him against one side of the cave and then the other. Deep-set eyes devoid of all intelligent thought glowed from the darkness.

Guldomak and the other warriors fell backward. Validus and hundreds of angels in heaven did the same, gasping as they beheld a beast of evil capable of unthinkable carnage. As Validus’s hands lifted from the marble, the image froze on Poxel’s terrorized face screaming in the mouth of the hideous creature. Angels in flight drifted downward to the floor in disbelief. They all stood in silence, facing an emotion they had rarely faced before—fear.

“It is the curse of abject evil,” a deep voice thundered across the Hall of Vision.

Michael’s wings beat in careful strokes as he flew from the doorway to the center of the hall. All the angels turned and watched the archangel settle to the glossy marbled floor. He walked among them, gazing intently into the faces of each one he passed.

“Are you surprised? Who here remembers the ministering angel Davenius?” Michael moved slowly between them, as if looking for something in one of them.

“I remember, Archangel,” one of the angels said.

“And I,” said another.

Most of the angels voiced their remembrance. Validus remembered Davenius well. He was admired and respected, for he was a minister of the inner courts of the Holy Mount. His beauty was unmatched, surpassing even Cadriel’s.

Michael stopped before Validus’s portal and pointed at the beast. “That was Davenius before Apollyon called him Tulgard. Once a majestic angel of glory, now a thoughtless and grotesque beast of utter evil. Devolution is the curse of sin for angels. Hades is full of them … degenerates tormenting the souls of wicked men. We call them droxans, and now the Middle Realm must endure them. I once faced a droxan with General Jorill and Commander Danick.” Michael seemed lost in thought for a moment. “If Tarsis can control it, our brothers face an enemy more fierce than a hundred Fallen.”

Michael turned and looked into Validus’s eyes. “
The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding
. Fear of the Lord, my brethren. Not of this! Without the Lord there is darkness of the mind, the soul, the body. This beast is the culmination of complete submission to evil. But greater is our Holy God whom we serve!”

The archangel walked back to the middle of the hall and looked up toward the dome. “The day will soon come when Elohim will call for you to serve as our warrior brothers now serve. Some to guard, some to carry, some to minister, and some to make war. Watch and learn.”

Michael rose up and exited the hall.

Validus turned back to the portal and wiped his hand across the marble. The image of the gruesome beast devouring one of his own disappeared, and no one petitioned against it. They had all seen enough.

Validus and Persimus left the hall and walked the jeweled tiers of the skywalk near the crystal falls. Neither spoke for some time. They stopped and looked out over the golden city to the Crystal Sea. Part of the great wall circling the city spanned across an inlet of the Crystal Sea. Here, twelve grand arched abutments formed the wall that crossed the inlet. Near the shore of the sea, nestled against the base of Mount Simcha and just inside the wall, stood the Hall of Ages, the one place forbidden by Elohim for either angels or demons to enter. It was as grand as the Hall of Vision, but in this hall time did not exist.

“Have you ever wondered what is within?” Validus looked at Persimus.

“Who hasn’t?”

“So grand, so unfathomable—to see the future and the past all at once. It is our tree, isn’t it?” Validus turned back to look at the hall.

“I suppose it is. As far as I know, Gabriel and the spirit of the man Enoch are the only ones who have entered. Then Enoch was carried to Paradise.” Persimus seemed mesmerized by the thought of the Hall of Ages.

“Is that where Gabriel saw the Plan?”

Persimus shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Both angels laughed. The levity was a much-needed escape from the horror they had just seen in the Hall of Vision. What a strange place the Middle Realm had become, Validus thought, so different from the Upper Realm.

The two realms were separated by a thin veil the angels called the Fringe,
a barrier that divided the spiritual from the physical and the physical from the spiritual. Nothing physical from the Middle Realm could pass through the Fringe into the Upper Realm, but that which was spiritual could pass through to the Middle Realm.

Validus had never been through the Fringe. Angels from the Messenger and Carrier Orders passed across it often and told him that such a journey felt peculiar. It was a spherical barrier that existed just below the seven stairways leading down from heaven.

As humanity had multiplied on the earth, Elohim opened more stairways into the Middle Realm. The closest stairway to Zion was just beyond the city gates, the Mediterranean Stairway. Validus could just see the marble columns and rails of the stairway beyond the wall.

“Zilnad said that from the earth the stairways look like holes in the sky.” Validus leaned on the rail spanning the two towers of the skywalk. “Once, he flew out from earth past a stairway and beyond the firmament toward the closest star, but it was too lonely, too cold, and too dark. That’s something the Hall of Vision can’t describe.”

Persimus looked over at Validus. He could tell his mind was elsewhere. “Do you think Cadriel will make it?”

Validus couldn’t help the glow he felt when he considered their friend Cadriel as one of the few warriors who remained to defend earth. He had fought well. What a noble and valiant warrior their beloved friend had become.