The First Technomancer (3 page)

“ENOUGH!”

The caverns began to moan in response to
Ambakhun's anger.

“You see plainly Iblis, his power must be
contained.” Admonished Blaise.

Lord Jinn knelt, placed his hand on the floor
as the cavern started to crumble, space-time shifted in a blur and
air rushed into the vacuum from where Ambakhun and Iblis Jinn once
stood.

Arms folded, Iblis Jinn stood in the forest,
over his left shoulder loomed Faunus's marble likeness. “Shockingly
close depiction, I knew Pan. A more jolly, or lecherous Kri-Skar
you'll never find. Unlike most of his species, he had a thing for
humans.”

Ambakhun Tan laughed at his sire. “You
realize of course, these humans begin to recall you not as a
magnificent, albeit fallen angel, but rather as a malformed
goat-man. Baphomet is a word I stumbled on in my travels. I doubt
they'd even recognize you were you to reveal yourself. Now, your
twin brother,
not having a recognition problem
.”

“Coward!” Iblis spat regarding his pod twin.
“He couldn't even do the deed himself. Instead he confounds some
hapless ovulating virginal girl on her honeymoon so that she'll
lodge him at her inn for nine months. All so he does not have to
produce any offspring of his own...” He glanced devilishly
sideways. “I'm afraid El-Shaddai does not grasp the fun he missed
out on.”

“That ornament Blaise – if that's his name
wore, what was it?”

Shaitan looked at his son with puzzlement.
“Just one of his multitude of bynames.” Iblis corrected. “Though he
– It to be accurate, did reveal what It likes most to be referred
to as. 'And thus, I AM'. “ The Lord of Darkness added. “At least
The One prefers my kind to address It in such a manner.”
Contemplating he said. “You've got a hardwired library of
technology, yet you could not identify that simple device? Look
harder my young Abaddon.” While Ambakhun shut his eyes to search
his library of technology, Iblis Jinn stroked his goatee, thought
of his next move regarding the future of his son. Despite himself,
he had to agree with 'Blaise', the boy needed training to sharpen
his innate, as yet unhoned charm bending.

“Glasses!” Ambakhun exclaimed. “Used to
correct maligned vision. But why wear them?”

“In some alternate reality, or time period
the Old Man noticed them, and thought they'd make him more
grandfatherly, distinguished, none threatening.” Iblis placed a
hand on his son's shoulder. Thoughtfully whispered. “We're going on
a trip Abaddon.”

“A trip – ”

[Planet Thaitin]

“Is this an underground city?” Ambakhun
glanced up with awe at a domed over, crystal cityscape that
glistened off in the distance, and throbbed with a white
fluorescent glow. “It’s magnificent!”

Shaitan bellowed, a great joyous laugh. “Yes,
and no. We are far below the surface, on a planet light years away
from Earth. This city was built by a now vanished race, what I've
called 'Ancient Ones', precursors to all which now exists. I've
added a few touches of my own.”

“So you don't preside over Perdition on a
throne of skulls?”

“Not exactly.” Iblis walked with his son
toward the crystal constructs. “It’s time for you to become more
than a conjurer of cheap tricks.”

In a fusillade of sparks Ambakhun deflected
and threw his own focused energy. First he would create a jump
point and then sling a ball of a nascent warped-space through it.
All of which resulted in a rather destructive outcome of
concentrated power, each a thunder crack!

“Yes impressive!” Iblis said while he rained
down blue lightening. “But it takes more than plasma balls to make
a true technomancer. You must bend creation to your will.”

Over his electrical discharges the wizard
asked. “Back on Earth, the Old Man, 'The One' as you call him said
Vril aren't supposed to procreate. Why? If that's true, how do you
continue on?”

“Like butterflies from out of a cocoon, we
are born, and reborn,” explained Shaitan. “Our program matrices are
recycled, resurrected in pods which hang in clusters from the vast
arched walls of an aureate cathedral. Everlasting life so that we
may do The One's bidding.”

“Did The One create your kind?”

Iblis paused with his lightening, stroked his
goatee, considered. This very question had puzzled his species for
as long as he could recall. “Probably. We do not know much about
its true extent, or nature. Only guesses, theories. For all our
history we Vril have acted as The One's instruments. There has
never been a time when we did not serve It.”

“Yet,” Ambakhun wondered. “You were fashioned
with male and female traits?”

“Male and female distinctions serve an
artistic whim on the part of The One. There are a limited variety
of us, yet we are not by any means mere clones. Though we are
divided into orders and functions. ” He wisely pointed out. “The
One has an uncanny propensity to maintain more than a single
thought, even mutually exclusive notions, at any given moment. The
One's choices regarding life's little quirks make better sense when
you view It as an eccentric artist above all else.”

Ambakhun nodded. “And you've not replicated
this birthing/resurrection process here on Thaitin?”

“No Vril understands the procedure, at least
in total."

“I suspect,” Ambakhun offered. “At least one
Vril has been entrusted with the knowledge of resurrection, and it
is this which El-Shaddai promises to his human followers for their
eternal faithfulness. I think the procedure has even been tested.
On one Lazarus of Bethany.”

“Yess... yes,” Iblis Jinn agreed, pleased by
his son's astute conclusion. “I suspect the upload procedure could
be adapted for human morphogenetic signatures. We do after all
share a common point of origin. From Vril, to Annunaki, to
human.”

Iblis Jinn thought to teach his offspring
more subtle, effective magic.

Calling forth a circle of power, the Shaitan
chanted and flowing, curved letters appeared in the space between
them. “This is Enochian, the celestial alphabet. With it you will
control earth, air, fire, water.” And he added. “Learn the first
law, the one and only law.”

“What is the first law?” Ambakhun asked.

“There must always be an equivalent exchange,
you do not get something out of nothing. This fact governs all.
Even The One must abide by it, for the law is implicit in the
material which he chose to mold the multiverse from. Know that an
artist is only constrained by the artistic medium at his disposal.
Choose your medium wisely.”

“How can God be limited?”

“The transcendent, are shackled by the
paradox of transcendence itself.”

On a gut level, Ambakhun grasped the
metaphysics of it. “I understand. To be transcendent is to be
blinded when confronted by one's own omnipresent reflection.” The
universal urge in favor of chaos suddenly made more sense to him,
which also oddly caused him to be reassured.

“The One exists in stalemate with its own
dark counterpart. All those evils placed at my feet,” Iblis Jinn
told his son, with no small amount of annoyance. “Belong to my
father's own mirror image, which he is always trying to
escape.”

“Are you going to teach me to move
mountains?”

“Oh yes, the first lesson shall be to tip the
balance of luck in your favor.”

“Luck?”

“Indeed, being able to increase your overall
chances in any given endeavor helps ensure your desired outcome.
This is the very equation I enacted before my journey to Earth when
I set out to beget you. A somewhat simple spell, yet very
effective.” He traced a sigil between them, an abstraction composed
of three Enochian letters. “Serpent's breath,” chanted the Lord of
Darkness. “Charm of death and life, thy omen of making.”

Weeks, perhaps even years came and went
within the sorcerer's training circle on Thaitin. Time meant little
to either Iblis Jinn or Ambakhun Tan, being the ageless creatures
that they were. With each turn of the circle the Technomancer
gained more control over his technology, as well as the superhuman
equations that it allowed him to cast.

“Am I alone, am I the only true
Technomancer?”

“Perhaps not.” Iblis Jinn told his son.
“There are means to replicate that which enhances your power. A
device spawned from your embedded Vril technology could be
constructed to give others such a magnitude of power as your own.
They would need to learn its use.” He made sure to point out. “Make
no mistake, your technology heightens what is already inborn in
humans. Primitive shamans are affecting change, tapping into this
power when they pray, or bend a spell.” He bared his shiny teeth.
“Crude, though effective man's will can accomplish much.”

In the breath he took in order to grasp this
new information, that there could yet one day be more like himself,
a somewhat personal subject entered Ambakhun's thoughts. “Did you
love her?”

“What?” Iblis asked, taken aback.

“My mother, did you love her?”

The Lord of Darkness had not expected such a
question. “Shaheen was an exceptional woman.”

“That's not an answer.”

“The truth....” Iblis Jinn had stood as
General over a celestial army which would, given the chance
slaughter and decimate without remorse any target he had a whim to
order destroyed, yet here he found himself stumbled by such a
simple, human question. Up until this moment the Lord of Darkness
thought he related to humans rather easily. “I guess, were things
different, I might have grown to care for her in that manner.”

“She – “ Ambakhun clutched at his temples,
overcome. The conduits of Vril technology which ran across his
cheek intently glowed. A vision of the future upon him.

“Tell me what you see?” Demanded Iblis Jinn.
His son had been gifted with an accurate clairvoyance. The tides of
time converged within his enhanced brain to be given substance.
With what Shaitan could gain from his son's foresight, he could
shape the future to his own liking.

“Under a red banner, emblazoned on it a
black, winged creature. I see a boy king. He rules with a sword
which shines like lightening. As if to be a phoenix, they rise...”
For a long moment, Ambakhun remained engulfed in his aesthesis. “I
see a circle of knights, a High King, of the stars he unites the
land...” The vision clouded, filled by a flutter of spectacular
wings, and a glimpse at the vaulted, warm sky of what Ambakhun
assumed to be Araboth.

“You must help us.” Pleaded the beautiful
blue-eyed woman, who was not really a woman at all, but rather one
of his father's fellow Vril who had undergone a transmutation to
provide for herself a curvy, sensual bronzed body, with
borealis-wings, attired in gossamer apparel that did very little to
conceal her womanly attributes. Instead, the translucent fabric
emphasized those bits which made her startlingly female. “We beg
for sanctuary here.”

Lord Iblis Jinn looked down at the small
group of his sibling Vril from upon his illuminated crystal throne,
head on hand. Beside him, the ever pregnant Lilith, Queen of the
Utuk-ku, his pale and lovely harlot bared her ivory fangs at the
beseeching Seraph woman. “Must I now Aiah?” Shaitan sneered. “Quite
a thing,” he sighed. “Star-crossed love.”

On a staff of his own construction, embedded
with many Vril mechanisms, Ambakhun Tan leaned his weight, while he
witnessed the proceedings going on within his father's domed
audience chamber, concealed beneath his green cowl, silent and as
unobtrusive as he could make himself. The Vril woman called herself
Aiah Rishona, which his technology translated from the Hebrew into
'Falcon Prime'. He wondered if all Vril had such ordinal
designations.

“We cannot go back to Araboth...” Moisture
glistened in Aiah Rishona's eyes, and the tears refracted the
crystal born light all around. Protectively she stood over a pod
beside her well shod feet. Inside pulsed an injured Vril, yet any
detail of its true features were obscured by its own faint
luminescence that enshrouded it inside the hatching pod.

“Does my brother know a doppelganger serves
at his side?”

“The Vretil who acts now as holy register is
a copy,” Aiah Rishona truthfully answered. “resurrected with
memories from before he created the monster Ishallrav...” Girlishly
she bit her lower lip. “Or fell in love with me.” She continued.
“Though El-Shaddai would not let his friend perish in a final
death, nor would he also risk the seed of rebellion implicit in
Vretil's daring experiments to go forward with the knowledge
contained in his current matrix. The Viceroy of Heaven deemed it
best to leave my wounded beloved as he was. Preserved, yet forever
in stasis.”

Shaitan steepled his fingers, elbows at rest
on the arms of his chair, and gazed at Aiah Rishona between the
apex of his metallic nails. His attention went to the pod beside
her, where Vretil, perhaps the most genius of all Vril lay in
oblivion, caught between life and death. “Why flee Araboth? Neither
you my dear Aiah, or Vretil are true outcasts. I know you woman,
you would endure even this torture of ungratified love for honor.
Yet you come here begging for my help. Me, a Fallen One. Tell me
what sin did our golden tongued Vretil commit to drive you both
from our warm heavenly abode?”

“Fragmentation...”

Shaitan raised a severe, arched brow.
“Risky.” He chewed on the word. “Only The One can truly exist in
more than any single place at a given time. Dangerous also to
dilute our matrices in such a manner.
Even I
would not
attempt such a thing.” Though, he had considered it “Where did
Vretil send this fragment of himself?”

“Earth...” Aiah Rishona said. “Joined with a
boy who became a great poet in a Sumerian royal court.”