Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (54 page)

“She is definitely
pregnant?”  Lucifer couldn't describe his feeling of … disappointment.  For
some reason he'd thought she was more intelligent, although he had no memory of
mating with her.  None at all.

“Yes, Sire.”  Zepar's
hands shook with excitement.  “It worked.  The genetic tests confirm that your
genes are dominant on all traits except for your wings.  Your son will have at
least a sentient-level IQ.”

“Except my wings?”

“The Emperor pulled
one hell of a rabbit out of a hat to graft avian DNA onto a human,” Zepar
said.  “Your child won't have wings.  But every other Angelic trait is a
dominant gene.  Just like the other species he tinkers with, sentience is a
survival mechanism.”

 “He?” Lucifer asked. 
“It's a boy?  You know that already?”

“Yes, Sire,” Zepar
said.  “And he will be just as smart as
you
are.  You can breed him back
to an Angelic female and your grandchildren will have wings.  Only without the
fertility problems so much inbreeding to maintain them has created for our
species.  The gene is there.  It's just recessive.”

“Hashem always hinted
that he'd help creating the hybrid races,” Lucifer said.  “Probably why he
hasn't been able to fix us.  It was not his work in the first place.”

“You've been trying
for 225 years to sire a child, Sire,” Zepar placed a reassuring hand upon his
shoulder.  “Is it really so terrible if your son appears as the Eternal Emperor
does?  A human male without wings?”

A human male … without
wings.  Just like his father.  He could think of no better homage to pay his
adopted father than the solution to fixing his hybrid armies …
and
a
grandchild who looked just like him.

“No,” Lucifer flashed
Zepar a shit-eating grin.  “It's an acceptable tradeoff.  Now I can stop
fucking every female Angelic in the galaxy and start looking for something a
little more meaningful.”

“Not yet, Sire,” Zepar
cut off his train of thought.  “One offspring won't solve our species' problem. 
You need to sire as many as possible!”

“How long until this
female delivers my son?”

“We believe around
nine months,” Zepar said.  “But I have even
more
good news.  Shay’tan
will release a small number of females for
other
males who've been
experiencing your difficulties to marry.”

“Why would he do
that?”  Lucifer was skeptical of the old dragon's motivations.  “It's in his
best interests if we
don't
reproduce.  It puts our armies on equal
footing.”

“The Sata'an Empire is
anxious to open up their worlds to trade,” Zepar said.  “Including the human
homeworld.  But Hashem won't allow it.  His precious seed world policies not
only prevent us from harnessing resources on our
own
pre-sentient
worlds, but Shay’tan’s as well.  It goads the old dragon to have some of his
most profitable trade goods boycotted.”

“It is so.”  Lucifer
wracked his scrambled brains trying to remember what strings Ba'al Zebub had
attached to receiving the human as a gift.  He drew a blank.  If there was
anything worse than selling your soul to Shay’tan, it was selling your soul
and
not being able to remember the terms of the contract.  The old dragon was
absolutely inflexible about the sanctity of a contract.  “Sorry … I think I had
too much to drink last night.  Refresh my memory?”

“Shay’tan finds your
proposal to quietly gift females to high-ranking officials to garner support to
open the human homeworld and similar pre-sentient planets for trade to be
intriguing,” Zepar said.  “That way,
everybody
can have access to
humans. 
And
get rich as hell.  Shay’tan would like nothing better than
to tweak Hashem’s nose.”

“My … proposal?”

“The one you hammered
out with Ba'al Zebub yesterday, Sire,” Zepar said.  “Are you certain you're not
waking up from another one of your blackouts?  You seem awfully disoriented.”

 “No, I'm fine!”  The
last thing he wanted was for word to get around that he was having blackouts
again.  This time, he wasn't just losing hours, but weeks of his life. 

He'd watched videos of
himself making great, rousing speeches before Parliament that he had no
recollection of making.  The blackout-Lucifer who played Parliament like a
fiddle looked no different than any other speech he'd ever made.  But he
couldn't remember making them.  Not for the first time, Lucifer wished the consequences
wouldn't be so dire if he went to a
real
doctor instead of the shady,
fly-by-night quacks Zepar dug up to give him a clean bill of health.

“Would you like me to
sedate her so you can mate with her again?”  Zepar pointed to the female who
hissed at them like a feral cat.

“No!”  Lucifer was
filled with self-loathing.  “She is already pregnant.  I'll do whatever I have
to do to produce offspring, but other than that, I would prefer to mate with
someone who can at least … enjoy … my talents.  Just … make her comfortable. 
And warn the guards that she is to be treated kindly.  She is carrying my
child.”

“Of course, Sire,”
Zepar said.

They moved through the
corridors, back to his personal quarters.  The
Prince of Tyre
was a
luxurious ship, sleek and tasteful compared to the gaudy ostentatiousness of
Shay'tan's diplomatic flagship … and largely empty of both diplomats and crew,
yet another reminder of how far his species had fallen.  One day, he hoped this
ship would be
filled
with Angelic crewmen, all brought into existence
because
he'd
found the solution to their problem.

“Now … remind me about
this plan I concocted while happily imbibing a little too much Mantoid nectar,”
Lucifer said.  “From the hangover I'm nursing right now, I must have swallowed
an entire bottle to drown my misgivings about fucking a pre-sentient animal!”

Zepar outlined the
plan as they walked back to his quarters, making Lucifer chuckle.  Zepar was a
scheming little bastard, but only
he
could cook up a plan ballsy enough
to not just solve the hybrid fertility problem, but also tweak the noses of
both
ascended deities who toyed with the mortal creatures of this galaxy as though
they were chess pieces.  Nothing too nefarious.  But it would make
him
look
like a hero while both emperors would look like fools.

“You're due back in
Parliament tomorrow,” Zepar reminded him.  “Shall I reschedule?  It will take a
week to get the ‘
Prince of Tyre’
back to Haven-3.”

“No,” Lucifer said. 
“Leave the ship in the neutral zone with orders to scoot into the uncharted
territories if that bitch, Jophiel, tries to board us.  The last thing I want
is my father catching wind I found the root race until I'm ready to act.  I'll
take a needle-ship back to Haven-3 and come back when needed.  When did you say
Ba'al Zebub would have that next shipment?”

“It will take several
weeks,” Zepar said.  “Something about Shay’tan insisting all human females go
through their matrimonial training academies prior to marriage.”

“Figures,” Lucifer
scoffed.  “The old dragon is nothing if not consistent.  Do whatever it takes
to secure those females.”

“The others won't be
any more pleased than
you
were to discover their new ‘wives’ are little
more than farm animals,” Zepar said.  “With your permission, I would like to
see if there is something I can do to train her to act a little more … well …
Angelic.”

“Yes, of course,”
Lucifer said.  “But don't hurt her.  While you're at it, see if you can do
something to make her less fearful."  He glanced back down the hallways
they'd just travelled towards the direction of the human female and
absent-mindedly twirled one of the feathers on his wing.  "I don't
understand
why
she doesn't like me? 
All
females like me.”

All except for that
bitch…

“I'll do that, Sire,”
Zepar scurried off to the laboratory he kept on the ship.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

July – 3,390 BC

Earth:  Village of Assur

Ninsianna

Ninsianna ran her
fingers through the vat of kishk she was helping Mama make.  Bucket.  Goat
milk.  Rennet from the stomach of a slaughtered sheep.  Straining cloth. 
Salt.  Unground kernels of grain.  Whenever summer rolled around, the goat
produced far more milk than they could use.  Kishk … curdled, dried milk, was a
way to preserve the highly perishable dairy product for times of year when the
goat didn't produce enough.  Although lately there had been a lot
less
excess! 

Ninsianna laughed. 
The look of determination on Mikhail’s face this morning as he'd coaxed ‘Little
Nemesis’ into the milking shed had only been exceeded by the look of utter
frustration as he'd emerged from that same shed with hoof prints on his cheek!

“Ninsianna!” Papa
called.  “Come here, child!”

 “Yes, Papa?”  She
rinsed the curds off of her hands and went into the house, pausing when she saw
he was set up for a shamanic ceremony.  “Oh … should I leave?”

“No, Ninsianna,” Papa
said.  “It's time to teach you the
right
way to go into the dreamtime so
you'll never get stuck there again.”

“Oh …” she said, her
expression puzzled.  “Isn’t that forbidden?”

“Times change.  We
must change along with them.”

A thrill of excitement
went through her body.  This was what she'd always wanted, to be treated the
equal of any shaman.  But Papa didn't know she'd been stealing dregs from his
journeys for many years and developed abilities she suspected even
he
didn't
have.  She voiced the appropriate trepidation.  “Am I even
capable
of
doing this?”

“You drank the sacred
beverage which led you to Mikhail,” Papa said.  “Those are upper level shamanic
abilities.  And now She-who-is speaks through you.  All I can do is fill in any
gaps in your knowledge so that you don't get stranded again due to some lack of
basic knowledge.  Come.  Sit.”

Ninsianna sat and
recited the names of each item he used.  She knew all but one.  “What is this
one, Papa?”

“This,” he said, “is
kratom.  It's similar to blue water lily in that it aids the transition into
the dream world.  But it's more powerful.   You must never blend it with any
other herb or it could kill you.  Nor should you use it if you suspect you may
be with child.”

“Where does it grow?”

“We trade for it with
the dark-skinned people who trade with the caravans from the lands south of
Kemet,” he said.  “Kratom helps your mind leave your body to search for
information.”

“What kind of
information, Papa?”

“Nothing too
frightening your first time out.  We shall spy on your friends and then you can
tell them about it later.  But the ability to let your mind see where your body
can't travel is good for spying on your enemies.”

“How does it work?” 
Ninsianna examined the strange, dried flower.

“There are three
levels of this ability,” Papa said.  “The first ability is called empathetic
feeling.  Every living creature has an aura, an eggshell of energy which
spreads out around them.  When you pass close to someone, your eggshells touch
and exchange information.”

“Would those be the
colors that I see?” Ninsianna asked.

“Most people can't see
the colors,” Papa said, “But
most
people have this ability to some
degree.  It's the sensation of knowing someone is sick because when you talk
with them, you can feel their sickness inside your own body.  The feeling is
vague, but you can hone the ability so that you know the difference between
your own feelings and those which belong to somebody else.”

“Like Mama?”

“Yes.  Like Mama. 
Mama rarely sees the things that we see, but she can sense the echo of what
somebody else is feeling.  When she was your age, I taught her how to focus her
mind to see.  The gift doesn't come naturally to her, but she can do it.”