Descent of The Watchers

by D S S Atkinson

skin as a shield. He thrust out precise strikes at his other opponents, penetrating one’s neck and disabling another at its joints before releasing the one he clutched.

  He stabbed the nephilim’s stomach roaring with a pulsing adrenaline. The malakhim violently brought his blazing stillot up through the beast’s sternum, through its chest and neck, and with a final grunt lifted the weapon through the deformed entity’s face, severing the beast in half from the torso up.

  Michael wheezed, staggering backwards. He looked at the death all about his feet. Both his and his enemy’s numbers were low. He saw many giants trying to flee through the dying walls of flame, much to his disgust but also relief. “Chase these monsters down! Let none escape! Track them to the ends of this world and see them thrown from its edges!” Masses of bronze suits and pale grey corpses lay scattered across Hermon’s surface. The seraphim did this. All of it.

  The thought urged him to walk beyond the enclosed ground, in search of the reason for his landing. Though he knew not how many of these giants remained, they will be dealt with later. “Gabriel?” He spoke through his headset but there was only silence in return. The malakhim prompted his recovering suit to change frequency in hopes of contacting his kin. The reign of the seraphim ends now. “Gabriel?” Again he called his peer, wearily stepping onwards up the mountain, in pursuit of a cause he knew to be just.

   

  18.

  Scrambling beneath the ark Samyaza felt a sudden vice crunch around her thigh followed by a slobbering snarl, looking back she kicked wildly screaming at the sight of Behemoth grasping at her bronze suit. The beast hollered, fighting through her limbs as she tried frantically to crawl away. The monster trailed her swiping and bashing against the structure causing it to rock unstably.

  Lashing her legs without focus she scrambled upon her stomach, pulling herself along, she wailed with dread beneath her visor for the terror which pursued her. The commander could hear the slathering beast rattling against the ark’s underbelly and feel its deformed hands groping at her feet in efforts to drag her to him. With struggled breaths she heaved herself towards an exit at the far end of the satellite. Pain and fatigue constricted her. With failing efforts she pulled herself free of the metallic wreck, rolling away from its imprisoning confides.

  She could sense her suit’s life fading and the difficulty to breathe grow. With what willpower Samyaza had left she took a stillot from her shoulder, glancing back at the abomination. It smashed and scuffled beneath the ark in a frenzied fight to drag itself clear to his target.

  The commander crawled on hands and knees, whimpering without control. Unable to focus in the commotion all about her and the impending monster whose presence she could not escape, she flinched and wheezed at the sound and sight of Behemoth thrusting the ark’s entirety up in a rampant display of power. The beast dragged himself ever closer to freedom with blood thirst in his bulging eyes.

  Samyaza watched in horror as the giant pulled his torso out from the wreck. Behemoth tried frantically to drag his legs free but suddenly hesitated. Another figure burst from the night. Heylel bounded about the ark’s wreckage, carried awkwardly in his hands by unimaginable strength was a splintered leg used to lift and uphold the ophanim.

  The seraphim coursed upon Behemoth, with a deep huff he brought the weapon down on the beast. It squealed at contact with the colossal shaft’s serrated tip which sliced through the monster’s skin.

  Heylel staggered backwards attempting to lift the gigantic spear once more. The wound sent his target ballistic, Samyaza watched Behemoth thrust his entire body up into the ark’s bowels lifting the gargantuan structure clean from the ground, the beast broke free as the metal mass crashed back into Hermon. He charged into Heylel striking him with a brutal blow that sent the seraphim skidding across the floor.

  A dull hum vibrated in Samyaza’s ear. She felt weak and dizzy. Some deep muffled grunts sounded out yet she could not make sense of them. Her distanced state ceased upon seeing the bloodied creature advanced towards her. “Master!” It bellowed spraying phlegm into the air. She raised her stillot limply yet it did not deter her pursuer. It gripped her, raising her high before plummeting her hard into the floor.

  Again the monster lifted her limp body and smashed it back into the ground. Pain writhed all about her. Her suit felt depleted. Another colossal lash from the giant stunted Samyaza’s focus. She lay broken upon Hermon unable to react. With hazed vision she watched the monster retract, it rose its arms up shrieking before the broken ophanim leg drove past her.

  It penetrated the monster’s chest and with some violent force lanced the beast straight back into the ark’s bowels. Behemoth released a piercing howl of agony. The weapon thrust cleanly through his body, bursting through the satellite’s metalwork and pinning the thrashing nephilim to it.

  Behemoth screamed and roared, hammering his fists against the satellite and swinging for Heylel, the berserk giant lashed wildly, spitting blood and grasping in a horrific display at the shaft, trying in vain to pull it out. Such fury surged through the monster’s face. It stared at Heylel, a red fountain began to pour from its mouth. The hulking entity’s breathing became rampant, it clutched upon Heylel’s weapon, in the moment the nephilim’s arms showed great tension before its limbs slowly became limp.

  Samyaza could scarcely make out Heylel hobbling towards her as Behemoth fell quiet. Before he reached her a group of nephilim flocked around the ark, to which the seraphim turned and charged to intercept them.

  “Samyaza?” The commander heard another muffled voice though she did not immediately recognise it. “Commander? Are you hurt?” She felt a hand encase her arm, lifting her from her slouched position. “Samyaza?” The commander looked up at the bronze encased entity.

  “Gabriel?” She mumbled.

  “Seraphim Yahweh has put much thought on our kinds’ dilemma, commander, he has a message for the watchers,” Gabriel extended a hand to Samyaza, in her pain and disorientation she accepted the act of hospitality. Beyond the malakhim she noticed a towering figure approaching lit up by the glare of a burning stillot.

  “What is it, Gabri -” A sharp splinting pain rushed through her lower back.

  “Malakhim!” Michael’s roar consumed her hearing within her bronze bodysuit. She flinched as a blazing stillot tip burst out of Gabriel’s face causing his body to immediately collapse and begin convulsing. “What have you done!” Michael bellowed again. Samyaza’s eye sight blurred, her vision fell dark. She slumped softly to the floor feeling lighter with each passing moment. Darkness briefly took over before the commander was brought back about by a powerful grasp shaking her body.

  “Samyaza!” She knew the voice and single light which was vaguely visible through the high-malakhim’s visor.

  “Michael, you were right.” The commander began to blubber aloud into her headset, overcome by the crushing realisation of her species’ impending fate. “The seraphim seek only to dominate.”

  “Commander?” There was disbelief in his voice. Before she could speak further the malakhim was stricken from behind, his body thrown across Hermon by some savage force, yet the commander could not focus. She panted lightly laying back, and stared up at the blue tinted sky. The glare of the sun erased the starlight, and with it her hopes and dreams vanished, all that she had envisioned and pursued since departing from her home world, in search of new life and a future for her species, had slipped through her grasp in the briefest of moments.

   

  19.

  Pain sundered Michael. He grunted, landing on his back next to the ark’s debris. Before he could gain some footing he felt a crushing weight fall upon him. Heylel collided with the malakhim holding him down with a grip mightier than any of the giants of this land. The seraphim grasped at his visor pulling at the material’s weak points in a violent fervour until he ripped the suit’s mask down from Michael’s face.

  “You.” Heylel’s blazing spheres emitted a flow of radiating light such
was their intensity. “Where is your seraphim now, malakhim?” The towering entity pinned his target, compressing his neck with both hands. Michael strained with all his strength yet his set paled in comparison to that of his superiors. He gurgled a moan of stinted laughter. “Something amuses you?” The seraphim’s glowing irises remained fixated upon Michael. A foul grinding wheeze was all the malakhim could produce for the pressure which crushed his larynx. “You will die upon this hell, traitor.”

  Michael felt the colossal seraphim scrunch his webbed fists tighter and tighter, he felt his wind pipe collapsing and Eden’s deadly air suffocating him until he could no longer uphold his head. His vision fell blank. The high-malakhim fell, what was but a brief drop felt like an eternity. Eden’s atmosphere constricted his lungs. Each breath poisoned his body.

  In the darkness Michael watched helplessly as Heaven’s grand lenses became aligned with Eden’s frozen poles. Harnessing the solar system’s star, the weapons magnified its light, generating gargantuan beams of radiating energy which tore down through the planet’s ozone ripping away its protective dome.

  The waters of the world rose rapidly, consuming the land and all which thrived upon it. As the planet’s damaged atmosphere began to escape into the