Chapter 17
Meeting with Jehovah
Lucifer walked rather than flew into New Eden so the inhabitants would have plenty of opportunity to see him coming. Anne and Sariel followed him closely, each pulling Batarel’s stretcher.
“What’s up with that?” Sariel asked, pointing toward the fifty foot outer wall.
They were still about a mile out, but the wall was alive with fungi, moss, and vines.
“Maybe they’ve moved the capital,” Lucifer said. “Or maybe, like on Earth, Jehovah found a reason to smite this Eden down as well.”
“I don’t think so,” Anne said. “There are guards on top of the walls.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right.”
He walked within hailing distance, but he found little need to call to the guards. The overgrowth had fastened the gates open, and besides, the guards were not human and varied greatly in height, fur, and scales. There was no telling which language he should even try to greet them with, assuming they were using an established one. As he walked through the vine-propped gates, two humans approached the group.
A chestnut-haired, middle-aged man dressed in a brown and green robe bowed low before them. The blonde woman beside him wore similar colors, but with a white undershirt that emphasized her cleavage, and tight-fitting pants that accentuated her curves.
“I trust your journey was pleasant enough, all things considered,” the man said.
“Most of us made it,” Lucifer said with a straight face.
“Yes,” the man said. “Your brother sends his regards.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“Most certainly.”
“Hi,” the woman beside him said. “My husband is rude. I’m Gaea.”
“Gaea?” Sariel exclaimed. “Like the Gaea? Jehovah’s wife?”
She nodded and smiled winsomely before tracing a hand around Jehovah’s shoulders. “Doesn’t he look great? And if I get tired of this one, I can just push him off a balcony.”
“You know,” Jehovah complained. “When I spent millions of years holed up in a library studying how to create a reincarnation mechanism, it wasn’t just so you would have an excuse to kill me whenever you wanted a different body to fool around with.”
“Really? Then why even make it?”
Jehovah shook his head and appealed to Lucifer and Sariel, but they nodded like she had a valid point.
Gaea hugged Jehovah and scrunched up her nose at the two brothers. She beckoned Anne to follow her and giggled as she whispered something in the elf’s ear. “Girl talk, gentlemen. You’ll just have to excuse us.”
Anne looked back at Lucifer and smiled before skipping off with Gaea amongst the trees and the foliage-covered buildings.
“I can see why you keep her around,” Lucifer said. “Never a dull moment.”
“Ditto, I’m sure.”
“Who? Anne? No, no, no. That’s Batarel’s daughter.”
“Right …” Jehovah said. “Should we talk business then?”
“What business do we have together?”
Jehovah clapped his hands and two furry, five-foot tall creatures scampered over to Batarel. They both grabbed a side and hoisted the groaning wizard onto their shoulders.
“I’m going with them,” Sariel said.
“I’m sure Batarel will be fine,” Lucifer said, trying to indicate with his eyes that he didn’t want to be left alone with Jehovah, but Sariel followed the stretcher anyway.
“Walk with me,” Jehovah said.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Everyone has a choice, but sometimes all options lead to the same conclusion.”
Lucifer gave Jehovah a good seven or eight feet of buffer room, and his military mind kicked into high gear. He was trillions of light years into a hostile pattern, his closest wizard adviser was dying, his brother Sariel was being useless again, he was surrounded by hundreds of clawed and fanged guards who barked and growled at him constantly, and he absolutely hated pretentious scientists.
Consequently, he had rarely talked to his cousin Jehovah. Not that he hadn’t tried to make conversation with the academic; he just found Jehovah wordy, elitist, and condescending. Of course, that was years before his marriage to Gaea, and for all Lucifer knew, Jehovah might be a completely changed demon, angel, or whatever.
They stopped in front of a stone building that was just as plant-infested as everything else in the city.
“I can create and destroy worlds,” Jehovah said, “but she won’t let me decorate them.”
“Does it really bother you?”
“No. She stays out of my lab. I stay out of her nature reserves.”
“Sounds like a good compromise.”
“My lab is significantly smaller than the rest of the universe.”
“Good point,” Lucifer said, chuckling politely.
Jehovah grabbed a root that had displaced a few stones in the wall. “Most call her Mother Nature because she’s always encouraging natural processes, even if they don’t make sense. She wouldn’t deny this plant from growing, even if it meant destroying such a fine building that I toiled at for years.”
“Didn’t you spend years on that plant as well?”
“No,” Jehovah said. “It grows fine all by itself—one of the benefits of building a stable universe that is for-the-most-part self-sustaining. It frees me up to do other things. Like construct this granary store or guide the formation of a galaxy out of dispersed gases. I chose not to fight these little battles with her because what is this plant or this building over a billion years?”
“Just something that decays naturally in a much shorter time, I guess,” Lucifer said.
“Right. Not worth my time investment.”
“Are we really talking about a building here?”
“Nope.”
Lucifer tried to think of a connection that Gaea’s meddling could have with himself and Jehovah. But he barely knew Jehovah, and he knew Gaea even less.
“Why do I feel like an insect under a microscope?”
Jehovah put his hands behind his back and continued walking. “Maybe it’s time for you to get behind the lens instead of in front of it. Let’s go to my lab.”
“OK,” Lucifer said. “Lead the way.”
A contingent of guards came down from the wall and followed them, but Jehovah waved them off. “I’ll be fine. Do me a favor, though, and keep the clone lab doors open in the west wing.”
“What are you going to show me?” Lucifer asked.
“What you are up against.”
Jehovah hadn’t changed a bit. Lucifer tried not to be insulted and struggled to keep his mind open to what Jehovah might have to say.
They walked over cobblestones to a large building at the center of the city. Unlike the other stone structures around town, this one was mostly metal and had far less overgrowth.
“The lab.” Jehovah waved his hand as he pushed the doors inward.
The interior was pitch black until Lucifer took a few steps toward the sound of Jehovah’s retreating sandals. Lights flickered across filtered water in gigantic aquariums, and where there wasn’t light, there were monstrous forms swimming about and tracking Lucifer through the glass.
“What are these?”
“Experiments.”
More cages and more mutated beings. Lucifer’s feet echoed loudly against the granite walls and floors. The scaly guard Jehovah had given instructions to outside the lab was waiting at an elevator. It hissed something to Jehovah.
“Thank you. Now, make sure all of your men stay outside, and stay away from the monitors. Do you understand?”
It nodded its reptilian head and bumped into Lucifer as it passed him on its way back to the entrance. Jehovah walked into the elevator, and Lucifer slipped in behind him as the doors closed.
“Basement,” Jehovah said.
The elevator hummed obediently, and Lucifer felt himself falling rapidly, ju
st short of free fall. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was alarming. He spread his legs and gripped the walls tightly. The light buzzed past the fifth, tenth, and twentieth floors. The last button was solid. Apparently, they had eighty more floors to go.
“All of these floors are experiments,” Jehovah said. “Some of them are biological. Others are advanced physics, including direct primal pattern manipulations in other dimensions. We’re going to the bottom floor. There is a mixture of both there.”
“Advanced biological physics?”
“Yes,” Jehovah said. “These specifically have to do with souls.”
“I thought that was what the Hall of Souls was for.”
“The Hall reanimates an existing soul. Where we are going, I am creating them.”
“I don’t understand,” Lucifer said, as the elevator dropped below the seventieth floor.
“In Chaos and the Elven Realm, immortals are created and maintained by the primal pattern. That’s why you can go into space and frolic around with an elf without needing oxygen or food or anything like that. It’s also why you can go faster than the speed of light by focusing almost unlimited energy into your wings. For an object of your size, the primal can sustain that kind of expenditure almost indefinitely, but when you’re talking about millions of immortals being created and maintained, it adds up. The creation requirements limit a universe’s potential.”
Lucifer appreciated the info but not the tone. “We must have done something right, though, for you to feel this need to steal the immortals from other universes and recycle them.”
“More energy for the mechanisms,” Jehovah explained. “And I’ll need much more to finish my experiments.”
The elevator dinged as it came to rest at the hundredth subterranean level. Jehovah exited, and lights began illuminating the interior. The entire floor held only three containers. Two of them must have been over twenty feet tall. The third bubbling container was only half the size.
As Lucifer got closer to the glass surfaces, watery shapes came into form. Each animal was asleep and had dozens of cables and tubes inserted into its body. The largest one had smooth leathery skin with a cylindrical body, short tail, and stubby legs. The medium sized one was another lizard creature like the guard earlier, but with wings similar to a demon’s and webbing in between the tendrils. The last one was all too familiar.
“This has to be a joke,” Lucifer said, pointing at the smallest glass container. “That’s a human.”
“It’s a human with a soul.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it can access the primal pattern. It can travel in space. It doesn’t die naturally. And you will have to fight it one day.”
“I don’t want to fight it, or you,” Lucifer said, gritting his teeth. “I want you to stop attacking Chaos with your destructive jet and leave us alone. In exchange, we will never attack your universe again. You can conduct your experiments in peace.”
“What makes you think I want peace?”
“What makes me think you want peace?” Lucifer summoned a sword and ran Jehovah through. “Because the alternative with me is remarkably unpleasant.”
Blood sprayed across the glass and obscured the slumbering human. Lucifer sliced off Jehovah’s head and kicked it across the stone floor and followed it to the elevators. Time to go.
An elevator dinged and a brown-haired man exited. He picked up the head and threw it back to Lucifer, who knocked it aside.
“The elves and the demons are a dying breed,” the new Jehovah said. “Just like the patterns that create and support them.”
He walked up to Lucifer and put a finger in his chest. “Your time is up.”
Lucifer pierced him in the abdomen and slowly slid the blade upward. Both men stared into each other’s eyes defiantly before Jehovah crumpled to the floor.
Another elevator announced its arrival, and the one beside it was called back up.
“Gaea can try to encourage this union as much as she wants,” Jehovah said as he stepped out. “But it means nothing in the long run.”
Lucifer raised his sword and pointed it at Jehovah’s face. “What are you talking about?”
“Pick the union. Doesn’t matter. You and Elandril. You and the girl. Saving your uncle; not saving your uncle. You all die.”
Lucifer brought the blade down and cleaved Jehovah’s head in two before kicking the body into the up button. Another elevator was on its way down. The numbers above the door said seventy-five. Then eighty. Then eighty-five.
“I’m growing tired of this game,” Lucifer shouted toward the shaft.
Ding.
“Just wait until you start losing more of your legions,” Jehovah said knocking aside Lucifer’s sword as he crossed the elevator’s threshold once more. “Just wait until you lose someone even closer to you.”
“I care for my men.”
“You’ll care for her even more.”
“Jehovah, I’m seriously growing tired of this. Speak plainly for once.”
“What are you going to do?” Jehovah said, grinning. “Kill me?”
Lucifer shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah.”
Again, Jehovah crumpled to the ground, and Lucifer kept chopping at the body until it was completely unrecognizable.
Ding.
Lucifer sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling as the fifth Jehovah came out of the lift. “Jehovah, stay upstairs. I have nothing left to say to you, and you certainly don’t have anything worth saying to me. Just the ramblings of an egomaniac bent on taking over the multiverse.”
“I’m not telling you this because I am taking enjoyment out of dying over and over again,” Jehovah said. “I’m telling you this because I’ve seen all of this happen. It will happen. Period.”
“So, now you’re an oracle?”
“I’m an oracle without the cloudy vision,” Jehovah said. “I’m directly integrated into Order’s primal pattern. The future of this pattern flows over me like a river of time. The inevitabilities are always the clearest.”
“And you see Chaos’s fall?”
“And the Elven Realm.”
Lucifer laughed. “A universe with a capital built of stone and roots is going to annihilate the most advanced universe in the cosmos? Really? And what did they do to you again?”
“The elves don’t need my help,” Jehovah said. “Their downfall was inevitable the moment Elandril granted you asylum.”
“Then help me stop it.”
“Why do you care?” Jehovah asked, leaning against the elevator opening and causing a string of beeps as it attempted to shut the doors. “You tried to snuff them out only a few million Chaos years ago. What has changed?”
“Chaos will change when I am on the throne. Of that, I can assure you. Besides, I wasn’t trying to eradicate their universe. I fell for the Council’s manipulations. Many of us did.”
“Simple minds do that.”
“You’re intolerable,” Lucifer yelled as he struck Jehovah down again, but the elevator’s relentless assault continued.
Lucifer cocked his sword arm and readied a throw at the arriving transport, and as soon as it dinged, he let the zinanbar fly. Jehovah didn’t get a chance to utter a word this time, and as the elevator doors closed and Lucifer sloshed through the blood- soaked floor, he heard the lift buzz obediently back to its caller. Meanwhile, the other one was making its way down.
Sixty.
“Jehovah, I’m coming up. Talk or don’t talk, but I’m leaving.”
Seventy. Eighty. Lucifer pushed his wings through the slits in his suit. Ninety.
The doors opened and there was Jehovah, leering at him as he leaned against the back of the room. “And what about your uncle and brother? What about Anne? You will leave them here with me?”
Lucifer’s wings shot forward and slammed Jehovah from one side of the elevator to the other. “You leave them alone.”
“If I wanted to kill them, they’d be dead,” Jehovah mumbled as
he slid out of the indentation he had just made in the wall. “Just as you would be dead if I wished it.”
“Why wait then?” Lucifer asked.
“There’s always a choice.”
Lucifer rested his arms against the other side of the lift and pressed the button for the top floor. The doors closed, and his wings crawled against the interior and spread around the enclosed room. He retrieved the sword that protruded from one of the Jehovahs he had killed earlier. “A choice?”
“Join me or die.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “How many of these bodies do you have left?”
Jehovah pursed his lips and laughed. “After this one? Four. I prepped eleven.”
“Good,” Lucifer said as his tendrils wrapped themselves around Jehovah’s body before bashing his skull into the wall repeatedly. Lucifer summoned his other sword as the elevator neared the tenth floor. “If you value those other four bodies, then stay out of my way.”
But Lucifer wasn’t so lucky. The doors opened, and there was Jehovah’s stupid grin. Lucifer made it bloodier with a sword pommel to the face before finishing him off with another decapitation.
“Steer clear of me. I don’t want to see your stupid face, and I don’t want to hear any more of your hate speech.”
The lights were still on and the monsters within the aquariums followed him.
“I don’t hate you,” Jehovah said as he emerged from behind one of the containers. “Your universe is simply doomed. I couldn’t stop it now if I wanted to. Every path I look at has the same ending.”
“And where are you when this happens?”
“I know what I am shown,” Jehovah said. “The multiverse is bigger than you or I.”
“So you admit that you’re not that important?” Lucifer said, laughing. “That’s a first.”
“This coming from the royal brat?”
Lucifer split Jehovah’s skull with both blades, coating a nearby aquarium with scarlet.
“Down to only two more bodies, psychopath! How about you just leave me alone?”
Lucifer could hear more sandals approaching him.
“It’s inevitable,” Jehovah said. “You’ll die. Your pattern will die, and Order will be free to siphon all the energy from the two dead universes. Well, four if you count the projections.”
“With so many new universes and creatures to play doctor with, you won’t need any of these experiments I guess, will you?”
Lucifer’s wings crashed into the glass cases, and a deluge washed over him. Fins and fangs scraped past, and he sunk his blades into anything that ventured within arm’s reach.
“No!” Jehovah screamed as he ran toward the slain creatures. “My work!”
“Finally,” Lucifer said, pushing Jehovah onto his back with a wing. “Some emotion other than pride and arrogance. You would scoff at me for fighting to hold onto my dying uncle, or for friendships with elves, but you would cry over dead fish? I guess even in your omniscience, you still didn’t see that one coming, did you?”
A western door burst open and Lucifer could hear screaming and sandals stomping toward him. He dispatched the tenth Jehovah underneath him and the lights went out. Lucifer’s wings illuminated the area around him with a soft glow, but the liquid now on the floor was reacting with the air and causing a fog to form.
Lucifer extended his wings in all directions and used them as feelers. The screaming and splashing and pitter-patter of sandals stopped, and Lucifer twirled his swords in anticipation. He pulled his undershirt up to his nose to block the pungent odor from the creatures.
“What’s so special about these fish anyway?” he called into the fog. “Why care more for them than you do about the universe you were born from?”
“I don’t care about these fish, Luke,” Jehovah said from nearby. “I saw you coming just as surely as I saw you smashing my containers to the floor. So, I filled them with an unusual animal that emits a paralyzing toxin into the air. Even works on immortals.”
Lucifer’s wings flailed around him as he ran toward the exit. He sent a few tendrils in a wide arc around him, hoping to connect with Jehovah’s body, but all he found was hard plastic and glass. More canisters burst and more scales and fangs poured onto the floor. He could see the light from the door, but his eyes were stinging and the fog was thicker than ever. Despite the pain, he kept his eyes open. No reason to give Jehovah an easy shot.
Jehovah appeared directly in front of him. “As I said, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
Lucifer’s tendrils hit Jehovah in the chest and pinned him to the floor. As he ran past, he plunged his blades into Jehovah’s torso. The light from the door grew brighter and brighter, but the stinging gas forced him to close his eyes.
He felt his extremities growing numb, but he willed his arms to obey him while he groped blindly through the greeting area. He felt drunk and disoriented as he stumbled over a mat and crashed into the door before rolling out into daylight.
The warm sun blanketed his face and forced him to smile. He waited for the door to close behind him before breathing in the clean air and rubbing his eyes. Since his fingers were covered in the same stuff that had burned his eyes earlier, he groaned in agony and was greeted with a series of clicks and unintelligible gibberish from nearby.
He had company. He used his undershirt to clear some of the gunk from his eyes and found himself surrounded by four fish-headed guards. He pushed himself to his feet with his swords and laughed at the way the fish men were grinning at him. If they knew that he had just killed a whole bunch of their god and several finned brethren in there, they probably wouldn’t be smiling at him like that.
Lucifer put a hand on one of their shoulders, and when it sniffed his fingers, it immediately toppled over. The other fish-heads giggled at their dozing friend, and Lucifer put his arms around them to help support his weight, causing another one of them to drop, which only caused more laughter. The helpful guards appeared to hold their breath as they bore the brunt of Lucifer’s weight toward the infirmary. He patted them on the back and tried to stay awake. Warning Sariel and Anne would be a lot harder if he was unconscious.