Rise of the Fallen (16 page)

Validus lowered his gaze to the ground. “Yes, but the Niturni we once called friend is no more. The evil of Apollyon has changed him forever.” A dangerous thought crossed his mind. He put a hand on Persimus’s shoulder and looked deeply into his eyes. “Persimus, if you should face him down there, as a warrior, don’t you hesitate.”

Persimus nodded slowly.

“Promise me … I don’t want to lose another friend.”

Persimus let his signature smile spread across his face. “You are a dreary sort on such a day of celebration. Come, Validus, let’s rejoice in our great call and enjoy our final days in heaven with joy!”

Over the next few months the warriors in heaven waited for the waters to recede. During this time, Validus insisted on training beyond that which Michael commanded. Persimus was the recipient of his zeal, and it caused no small dissension between them, but it didn’t dissuade Validus in the least. He did it as much if not more for Persimus as for himself. There were things they could not practice without the construct of the physical world, things like translation and materialization, but they had no hindrance to their practice of the sword.

In time, the waters receded, the land dried, and the day of descent came. One hundred thousand angels at each of the three nearest stairways to the Middle Realm waited for the trumpet of Gabriel—the trumpet blast to mark the beginning of the second generation.

Validus and Persimus stood with wings ready at the Mediterranean Stairway.

“Are you ready for this?” Validus turned to see Persimus looking toward
their beloved city, Zion, in the distance. “I’m going to miss it too,” Validus said, imagining he could see the gleaming city beyond the curve of the outlying regions.

Persimus gave a quick nod, then turned to look at the stairway. They had been told to fly directly to the Valley of Ur. The messenger raised his trumpet to his lips, and the golden instrument blasted forth the one lone note of declaration.

One hundred thousand angels lifted up, and the air filled with the sound of beating wings. A constant stream of angel warriors descended through the stairway, passing through the Fringe and into the thickened world of the Middle Realm. Many of the angels gazed at the splendor of the earth, experiencing the sensations of its wonder for the first time. In some ways it was strangely not as vibrant in sensation as heaven and yet in other ways it was more so. There was a draw to touch, smell, see, hear, and feel it all, like the feel of silk in one’s hand—so soft and elusive yet causing one to desire more.

The angels began to set down on the ground below Validus and Persimus, near one lone warrior. Validus recognized Tronan, the one his chains had saved in the last battle. The angels were gathering in formation before him, waiting for orders.

There was so much to know, so much to learn. How could four first-generation warriors train three hundred thousand recruits with any efficiency? All Validus could hope for was that the Fallen would need even more time. Their last four first-generation warriors were bound at the bottom of the Euphrates. It would be months if not years before they were ready for war.

All but a few thousand angels had now settled onto the earth when Validus looked eastward, where he knew the nearest Fallen tunnel to Hades lay, and something made him shiver. Though he could not see the tunnel at such a distance, he could see the black smoke rising from it. Validus hesitated, then flew higher to see if he could quell his imagination.

“What are you doing, Validus?” Persimus yelled up at him.

“Form up, warrior!” Tronan shouted from below.

Validus took two more beats of his wings, then dived toward Tronan. “The Fallen are coming our way, sir!”

His alarm stirred the angels to disorder, and Tronan looked eastward. “Impossible!”

“They are rising and coming directly toward us, sir.”

With each passing second, the swarm of evil broadened, blackening the sky as it came.

“Your orders, sir?” Validus asked.

Tronan looked at the rising evil and then at his twenty legions of untrained warriors, all waiting for his command. Validus knew from his time at the portal that the largest contingent Tronan had commanded was a detachment of fifteen men. For a moment Tronan looked completely lost and without hope.

“Sir?” Validus prompted. In less than sixty seconds the Fallen would be on them.

Tronan looked at Validus, and a steely look of determination filled his face. He morphed his wings, drew his sword, and flew upward so that all the warriors could hear him.

“Five legions spread to the left, five more to the right. Draw your swords, lose your wings, and use the speed of the ground to fight. Fight alongside one or two others—never alone! Move!”

Validus flew to Persimus. “Stay beside me, brother,” Validus shouted in the chaos.

Persimus had not yet demorphed his wings.

“You’re going to need all of your quickness. Demorph now!” Validus yelled.

Persimus hesitated, then let his wings recede into his back.

The first wave of Fallen hit center mass of their formation, and the chaos was like nothing Validus had ever seen, not even from watching the Battle of Kish through the portal. This was untrained, uncontrollable mayhem.

Within seconds, thousands of warriors and Fallen dissolved into thick vapors streaming upward and downward. Validus and Persimus fought back to back, just trying to survive the day. At one point in the fray, Persimus faltered and Validus intercepted a deathblow at the last second to save his friend.

The battle did not last long. Within ten minutes the Fallen retreated back and away, but the damage they had inflicted was significant. Validus imagined the other two hundred thousand warriors had just experienced the same thing. How many warriors had they lost? Was it enough to put them at a disadvantage on the first day of the second generation?

Persimus was bleeding from his arm, and Validus had taken a slice across a thigh. They took turns bandaging each other’s wounds.

“Welcome to earth,” Validus said as he wrapped a piece of torn cloth around his friend’s arm.

Persimus didn’t smile. “It’s a gritty place, isn’t it?” He winced as Validus tightened the knot.

“Only because sin makes it so.”

When the vapors of dissolution had cleared, Tronan was not to be found. Lilk, the highest-ranking warrior, took command and assigned help to the wounded. Once he recovered some order and took count of the losses, he called two uninjured warriors.

“We must get to headquarters and let General Danick know what has happened.”

“I think they already know, sir,” a fellow angel replied. “Warriors are coming our way.”

All three contingents of the landing warriors had been attacked by the Fallen in an effort to get an early upper hand on the war for the Middle Realm. And although there was no way of knowing how many the Fallen had lost, Validus was quite certain that the angels had incurred the heavier losses by far.

14
 

2347 BC

It took days to recover the wounded and bring some organization to the Warrior Order. When they were ready, General Danick gathered his army in the Valley of Nan, near the abode of Noah and his family. He placed detachments of guards in flight at one-mile, five-mile, and twenty-mile intervals surrounding the valley.

When all was ready, he stepped up on a rise so all could see him. Commander Brandt and Captain Rafinni stood quietly beside him.

“Your initiation to battlefield earth has been a costly one. Our enemy knows no mercy. Our enemy has no bounds by which they live, as we do. Our challenge as the holy angels of Elohim is to be just without being vengeful, to be cunning without being deceitful, to be merciless without losing our compassion, to be victorious without losing humility.”

General Danick paused. He scanned across the fifty-two legions that had survived the first attacks of Apollyon. “We face the fierce tactics of General Desgard, Apollyon’s most cunning and ruthless warrior. Just as you have seen, you must learn to expect the unexpected. The Fallen will attack us at every opportunity, and they will be merciless. Your order of creation means nothing here. Whether you are the last that Elohim created or the first, on earth you will be ranked according to your skill and performance. In war with the Fallen there is no respect of rank, only respect of your fighting abilities, and that is how I will commission you. Is that clear?”

A thunder of voices responded.

“Commander Brandt has assigned temporary commanders to lead our fifty-two legions. Each of you will be assigned to a legion, a unit, a century, and a detachment.”

Validus was assigned the Thirty-Sixth Legion, Fourth Unit, Eighth Century, Second Detachment. Persimus was assigned the same century but a different detachment.

The new warriors had much to learn, and earth was so different from heaven, even in the spiritual realm. Validus discovered there was a duality of substance between the physical and the spiritual. That which existed in the spiritual did not exist in the physical, but that which existed in the physical existed in both the physical and the spiritual. The duality of the object was tethered together in coexistence.

But angels could learn to sever the tether temporarily, bringing the object into usefulness in the spiritual world, something they called translation. Without close proximity to the object and without continual concentration, the spiritual object would dissolve and be retethered to its physical duplicate. The larger the object, the stronger the tether and the more difficult it was to sever it from its physical construct.

Typically, only small weapons and other similar objects could be translated and used. For some angels, this type of translation was difficult to master, but Validus found it rather easy. Only inanimate objects could be translated, however, for the tether of a living being was far too strong. This tether could only be broken by death itself.

Translation from the spiritual to the physical was significantly more difficult. It was a skill only one in ten angels seemed to do with any mastery. Since there was no duality in a purely spiritual object, in order to translate to the physical, trillions of the three particles of creation had to be rearranged to form even the smallest of objects.

Validus worked for months, but the skill was elusive. He was exuberant when he was able to translate a small pebble first into the spiritual realm and then rearrange its construct into an irregular piece of metal in the physical realm. The moment he broke concentration, the metal translated and retethered back to the original pebble.

Watching from the portal, he had seen first-generation angels with this skill translate their entire bodies, swords, and clothing into the physical realm. He wondered if he would ever possess such ability. Persimus, however, seemed to be quickly gaining the skill, and Validus was quite certain that he would one day have it fully mastered.

One skill that all angels possessed was that of materializing through physical structures such as walls and doors. When Validus materialized through a physical barrier, he could feel the push against his body. The denser the object’s construct, the more it pushed against him, resisting his ability to materialize through it.

Mastering the combined ability of materializing and translation gave angels a significant advantage in a battle. A warrior adept at utilizing both skills simultaneously could materialize through a wall, then translate a section of the wall as a solid in the spiritual realm to set a foot against and push off to accelerate in an attack. It allowed a warrior to walk up a stairway, then sink through the floor back to the ground level. Translation and materializing was a daily part of their training, but Validus practiced far more than what was required of him.

Noah’s family quickly multiplied. Much to Validus’s surprise, the Fallen did not seem very concerned with the man and his family for many years.

“Desgard is a patient general,” Validus heard Commander Brandt say to one of his captains. “He knows the heart of humanity well. Just as we are looking to defend the righteous, he is looking to use the wicked. Time is on his side. As the population grows, so does the number of wicked hearts available for him to use. Don’t be complacent—when the battle comes, it will come fiercely.”

Commander Brandt’s words chilled Validus’s soul. He hung on every word General Danick, Commander Brandt, and Captain Rafinni spoke, for he knew that in them was life for an inexperienced warrior.

Initially General Danick divided his forces into thirds to watch over each of the three sons of Noah and the outspreading of their families. Three primus commanders—Kelandar, Guilden, and Porthan—were assigned to Shem, Ham, and Japheth respectively. Validus’s and Persimus’s detachments fell under Commander Guilden. As the months became years and the families of Noah and his descendants began to spread, the number of attacks by the Fallen increased proportionally.

Commander Brandt was indeed right in his evaluation of the hearts of humanity. Secretly Validus had hoped that with a new start from the righteous line of Noah, the Middle Realm would be a different earth than that which had moved the hand of Elohim to global annihilation.