04

Chapter III - Fall of the Akharu

A wraith of black rags and wrinkled, diseased flesh, the akharu rose up and floated over to them. It did not walk, but literally floated, and those that had been watching Rachab, envious of the affection she showed the strangers, fled at once from the inn, while a few remained frozen in dread.

The sisters and brothers did nothing but stand still in terror, as the wraith moved and the oil lamps flickered. It avoided sunlight from the windows, and stayed in the darkness, while making it seem darker in its passage.

With their hostess unconscious suddenly, Rammu rolled her gently off of him, and composed himself quickly. Ashamed of his actions, and his weakness before the innkeeper, he rose with fury to confront this demon.

Gabri was by his side, and put a hand on the hilt of his dagger, and together they stood their ground.

"Who are you? And what magic is this that I sense from the innkeeper?" the creature said in the most ancient form of their language, which they barely comprehended.

But the men were educated in the history of their people, and they did know the old languages, from Akkad and Ur alike, and Rammu spoke it to the akharu with authority.

"The hostess we know not. But you, we know you, and your wretched kind!" he said.

The few that were frozen in terror gaped in disbelief at such disrespect to the servants of their malik and adons.

"You have no power here," Gabri added. "Akharu, created from the days of Enheduana! From the abyss you came, and to the abyss you shall return!"

Enraged, the creature shrieked, and pushed Gabri backwards with great force.

Rammu pulled his dagger and stabbed it, and metal made a sickening scraping sound as if against the bones, and the wraith shrieked at a higher pitch.

Gabri was knocked against a wall, the very walls of the mighty fortress city of Yareah.

The akharu fell to the ground, and thrashed amongst the wool rugs and twisted them.

"Spies! Spies!" the wraith said, and turning to the other people with its fierce, gray face and fanged teeth, it commanded. "Go and summon the Anakim, for the spies of the enemy are here!"

"Fear? Do any of you know real fear?" Rammu told the witnesses. "For indeed we are spies from the Mhannat of Joshua, from the Pillar of Smoke and Flame that thunder and roar in the east! Who do you fear more? Those that walk with the Adon of Hosts, or these wretched creatures that cannot even contend with two servants of the True God? Tell anyone of us, an you will not only die, but your soul will be torn asunder, and burn forever!"

The confidence in Rammu's voice gave them pause, and he sneered at them, and then looked down at the akharu.

"You should not have come during the daylight, when you are weak," he said as he leaned over the creature. "But even if it were night, and the moon full, and the full measure of your power brought against us, you would not prevail!"

With his palm towards the wraith on the ground, the air shimmered with some new power, and the black creature was gripped by it, and lifted up before Rammu.

At this Rachab had awakened, and stared in horror at this scene of a mortal and beautiful man making the very air shimmer, and causing an akharu much distress.

"No!" the creature said. "This cannot be! Humans cannot use magic!"

"Indeed, we can," Rammu sneered. "As my kin made seas part, and staffs turn into snakes to consume the magic of the most powerful magicians in all Kemet! Hark to the legends you hear from the Black Lands of the South, from the Great River of Rivers, for they are true!"

Rammu turned his wrist and his hand, and the akharu went from standing tall, to hovering sideways. Then Rammu lifted his hand and smashed it against the wooden ceiling, a hard knock against the flooring of the rooms above that made dust shower down on them all. Then Rammu dropped his hand and the creature was smashed into the floor with crash.

The creature turned on its back and into a beam of sunlight, and its gray skin began to smoke and sizzle before them all, and its black blood from the neck of its wound was like acid upon the floor.

Gabri came and stabbed its black heart, and then lifted his hand just as the whole body imploded upon itself, rags and all, every aspect of it, even its blood, and it turned into a black ball. The air shimmered, and it vanished from sight before all.

The blade of the dagger glowed red hot, and Gabri had to drop it with a hiss before his burned him.

"And that is the fate of all such creatures, who will become nothing more than disbelieved myth," Rammu spoke. "Now be gone! And speak to no one of this, for to witness the fall of one of their demons will surely cause you to be silenced. They will not want others to know of this, that mere mortals can possess magic!"

And they all fled, and indeed they did not speak of what they saw to anyone. They instead prepared to flee the city, and the land, before more of these akharu-slayers arrived.

Rachab reached up, crying with both joy and awe at him, and touched his hand. He looked down at her, and his expression softened.

Chapter IV - Vision

What she beheld in her brief sojourn into the past and future was startling. She beheld the Twelve Nations themselves, the Apiru they called them, and they numbered in the many tens of thousands!

Impossible, for so many to survive in such an unforgiving wilderness of dry desert, and yet their god had provided. But more startling was that everything they, the Kenaanim, thought about these people, was wrong.

Prudish puritans, haters of pleasure and lovers of self-abasement, these Apiru are! Jealous of the splendor of Kemet for which they had lived well even as slaves, they forsake all civilization and seek to destroy it!

So said the malik of moons past to the rumors from desert wilderness. But that was not so, she saw now.

These people walked naked in the desert, and held with all esteem the art of sexual pleasures and lust, and had more love for life and nature and God than any people of any land. Why, the very angels themselves came amongst them, and mingled with them, and gave them immortal strengths to equal, if not exceed, the Anakim and Emim warriors. They needed no armor or good weapons, for with their bare hands they could tear giants asunder. Their women were beautiful beyond belief, exotic and strong and exceedingly cunning. Their men were kind and gentle with them, and kissed their feet, while rising as mighty warriors against their enemies, giving them lives to protect women and children. And they sacrificed no children, no men, and no women, to their only god. They loved life, and cherished it.

But more shocking than anything, thought monogamous and loyal in marriage, these people had orgies in the desert under the moonlight and around great fires, orgies that would make Anat wet herself and Baal's cock harden. Husbands and wives who made love in the open, as the children of Adam and Eve would have in paradise, had it not been lost. And with the Pillar of Fire high above them, roaring like a tornado, Rachab caught but a glimpse of their world, of some magnificent balance between purpose and pleasure, between morality and madness, and between playing and plowing.

Relics from a dying age, from Abram, the age that feared the rise of empires and great deeds of man, in their superstitious zealotry! The malik had said to his city subjects. They try and keep us from living our lives fully and completely, from our orgies, they demand we leave behind our nature and aspire to some noble purpose! Bah, I say! We are but animals, and have but one life! Use it wisely, and enjoy its fleeting fruits!

But the One God told these people of a different story, of evolution and aspiring to something noble, but greater, as animals become greater over many long centuries. Rachab saw it all, as clear as day, the New World Order of reason and knowledge of all things that the Apiru would bring to pass, of new worlds to be explored amongst the stars, of the end of superstition and mindless lusts, and animal passions, for real pleasures and passions in progress and exploration. In one mad rush, Rachab saw her kind, humans, upon countless worlds many centuries from now, healed of all diseases, immortal, and prepared to face the vastness of space and time as the Sons and Daughters of God, not animals.

And she saw the Ark, and the storm of fire above it, and the sense of a true god, not just some mighty creature worshipped by men and women today. A god so powerful that if its full presence was made, all the earth would be consumed, and that pillar of fire was but a gentle touch.

A true god, or a creature from beyond the stars, true and real and terrible? Rachab wondered, for many knew that the gods were but myths, the priesthoods nothing more than those who exploited ignorance and superstition. The people have always known. But who was this god, and his mhannat of angels? Who was this Adon of Hosts whose name meant only I AM?

As if in answer, inside her very vision, this God say her from a far distance ... or from no distance for He was everywhere!

I ... see ... you ... Rachab ... came a voice of power and terror. Her vision became a confusion of countless gears and wheels, and then 0's and 1's. This God was a simple god, and yet vast. It could not lie, for it was knew only truth. 0's and 1's, on or off, true or false. There was no other way it could think! It had not created the universe, but was the universe entire. Everything that ever existed, or ever would exist, was a singularity to this being.

I Am turned into a face, and a handsome man who smiled warmly at her. Fear not, for I am not their God, but the God of all. From your bloodline I shall be born. And from my birth all there will be redemption.

And so she awoke, and saw the fall of the akharu, and Rammu standing above her and his heart softening for her.

"I have seen the Ark!" she said. "I saw the Sea of Edom part, and the mighty army drowned in it! I saw it all, Salmon."

"Salmon? Then you have learned my true name?" Rammu replied, and he lifted her to her feet.

"I have seen Him. I have seen I Am!"

He smiled at her, and then kissed her.