Joshua Valiant

by Brian Godawa

  These outward differences had comforted Arisha at first. She had been so damaged by the betrayal of her people that she wanted to start over in a world as far away from them as possible. But for all the differences between the two people groups, there were some things that just did not change in creation. And male nature was one of them. From that she could not get away.

  As soon as she was brought to the clan, she learned that there was no king or leader. It was an egalitarian community of about four hundred people. They all lived together in the one large cavern with spring fed lake. They did not believe in individual ownership. They shared all things in common, such as living quarters, food, and even each other. They even slept all together in the cavern, like a bed of snakes would. Thus, there were no families with couples as parents, but rather, the young were taken care of in one group by volunteers in turn.

  They prided themselves on being different from the other peoples of Canaan who were led by kings and queens and other elitist rulers that always eliminated equality and created a caste distinction between the poor and the rich. But not so in “The Nest,” as they called their utopian community.

  They had accepted Arisha into their midst under the condition that she shave her body of all hair and adopt their ways. She readily agreed and settled into her new identity.

  But she had learned quickly that all such claims to equality were a façade, because the priesthood that was responsible for the religious cult of the Nest was in reality a privileged class that ruled the people in the name of the people. The god Nachash was the ultimate authority over the Nest and the priestly class were his enforcers.

  Someone always rules the community.

  Arisha had gone along with it all at first, absorbing her identity into the commune, but eventually, she could not abide the “special attention” she was getting from the men who would be lined up to use her for their satisfactions instead of “equal access” to other women. Equality was a lie to justify the redistribution of power from those who had more to those who had less.

  Her unwanted attention had resulted in several miscarriages and abortions, the first of which had been an abominable experience she taught herself to forget. But one never fully forgets such things.

  She started to stand up for herself and would not submit to the “greater will of the Nest,” as the manipulators would call it. She got a reputation for having a fiery independent will and a selfish loner disposition. Individual worth was discouraged in favor of the will of the Nest. She became so defiant that one of the priests who knew her occasionally called her “Rahab” after the sea dragon of chaos. He saw it made her even more incorrigible, so he stopped it.

  Arisha was now twenty years old.

  She was preparing food to eat in her special area that she used for herself, away from the community. It was one of those days where she sought to be left alone with her thoughts. But this was not to be for her today. She heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

  She peeked out from behind the rock over in an empty area of the cavern. She was shocked to see a dozen men arriving behind the high priest Tannin, whose name meant “dragon.”

  She knew immediately what her fate was to be, and she lashed out with the food knife in her hand, slashing the first man to grab her. He screamed and pulled back his arm, a large gash across the forearm pulsing blood out onto the ground.

  But it was futile. She would not be able to protect herself against the lot of them.

  They quickly surrounded her and subdued her. One punched her in the stomach and she doubled over in pain.

  Tannin yelled out, “Stop! Do not damage her.”

  She struggled to get loose as he came near to her. But she was held in place by a dozen hands.

  Tannin got right up into her face and stared down into her eyes with a reptilian grin. She could see his teeth that were all filed to fangs. His skin was scaly and so dry it was cracking and peeling. The priests of the Nest were humans, but they engaged in sorcery with drugs to try to turn themselves into snakelike beings. The result was ugly mutations of ophidian humanoids.

  She spit in his face. His eyes blinked, but he did not flinch. Instead he responded by sticking a forked tongue out of his mouth to lick her face with relish.

  He smacked his lips with an erotic rush and said, “Tonight, you will make a fine sacrifice.”

  This evening was the annual sacrifice to the Serpent Nachash. Gilgal Rephaim was not the only place of serpent worship in Canaan. In fact, Ophiolatreia was a dominant force throughout the entire land, illustrating an underlying influence of that god behind the pantheon of deities that ruled in their various territories. Even the mightiest of gods gave homage to the Serpent.

  Thus, this evening, the gods of the area, Ashtart, Chemosh, and Molech would be at the ceremony that would include a visit from Nachash himself.

  And for that visit, six female citizens must be offered in sacrifice in order to protect the community for the coming year and appease the god’s taste for blood.

  Tonight, Arisha was to be one of those six victims. She was rounded up with the other five women in a pen and forced to wear white garments as a symbol of purity. It seemed to her a mockery of the truth, since none of them were pure, especially her.

  Everything was lies. Everything. She did not know what the truth was anymore. She had escaped from Banias after being made a nymph to be offered up for the satisfaction of satyrs and other men’s lusts. And now she was being made an offering to a serpent god to satisfy his bloodlust.

  It had felt to her as if she lived in a world that was unnatural. It made her long for an impossible purity of being. These malevolent gods made her wonder if there was a good and loving divinity anywhere on the earth. Or was existence just a brutal form of suffering until one died and entered the oblivion of Sheol?

  She did not have the luxury of pondering such self-reflective thoughts anymore. They would soon be all over. The priests led the white robed women, followed by the rest of the community out to the megaliths of Gilgal Rephaim.

  The community spread out around the vast stone circle and chanted poetic verse that sounded like soft hissing. At the front of the crowd, Arisha noticed the two gibborim kings of the area, Og of Bashan and Sihon of Heshbon. They too were here in obeisance to the Serpent.

  The parade of priests led the women through the stone openings toward the circular tumulus in the center.

  As she tread the pathway, Arisha considered in her mind the meaning of the serpent in Canaan. It was a powerful divine figure that symbolized many things. Its elongated nature and phallic shape made it a sexual symbol of fertility. Its shedding of skin symbolized eternal life. The image of a snake eating its tail in the form of a circle was called the Ouroboros and was a picture of the cosmos. It was a symbol of kingship, borrowed from the uraeus on the crowns of Egyptian Pharaohs.

  But the serpent was also a universal symbol of both healing and wisdom, as it was known that the Serpent had given words of wisdom and maturity to the first humans in the garden paradise so long ago. He had helped to free humankind from the unfair controlling tyranny of the Creator who sought to keep mankind ignorant and subservient to his capricious whims.

  But the snake was also the guardian of the tree of life in that paradise and the chthonic regions below.

  All these and other symbolic meanings surrounded serpent mythology with an aura of divinity and greatness shared by few other beings. But Arisha was not seeing that greatness as they lined up around the tumulus. She was seeing the fangs behind the elegance, the poison behind the beauty, the lies behind the split tongue, and the death behind the smooth silence.

  But her thinking was interrupted by the presence of the visiting gods, Ashtart, Molech and Chemosh. They were all lined up before the women. For the first time ever, Arisha had the opportunity to see these beings up close. She had always seen them at a distance. But at this closeness, she noticed something she had never seen before. She could see their eight feet tall power
ful frames, their shining skin of subtle scales, and their ophidian eyes of lapis lazuli blue.

  But she could also see the features of their faces, and the face that caused her shock was Ashtart. Her whole past came flooding into her mind as she stared up at the great Watcher god looking down upon her and the others.

  The reason for this was that she recognized that face. She had seen it before. She had studied it. It was the face of Azazel from the statue of Banias. Though Ashtart was a female, she knew at that moment it was really Azazel in disguise.

  She did not know how to react. Ashtart noticed her stare and became curious.

  She tried to appear more naïve than she was.

  Suddenly, the sounds of eerie music echoed through the stone walls as musicians played to introduce the being rising from the tumulus: Nachash.

  He was not a formidable looking divinity. He was not muscular like Molech or handsome like Ashtart. Only his six wings spread out behind him added a sense of glory lost on his rather undeveloped and ugly form. But his voice carried authority, he shined like burnished bronze, and the other gods seemed to defer to him with respect.

  The truth was, Nachash was a seraph, one of the highest beings in Yahweh’s heavenly court. And in that court, his ordained role was to be “the satan,” the accuser or adversary who challenged Yahweh and his law.

  On earth he went by another name, Mastema.

  He was not physically imposing, but he was diabolically cunning and a master of legal manipulation. His primeval act of temptation in Eden had plunged the world into chaos and emboldened the mighty two hundred Watchers from Yahweh’s divine council to rebel. One of the leaders of that band of rebels was the mighty Azazel, who now stood before Nachash.

  But all this, Arisha could not know. She could only discern that Ashtart was the Azazel she had worshipped back in Banias, and that all was not as it seemed.

  The gods conferred amongst themselves. The six women were lined up in a row for sacrifice.

  And then a bizarre creature was carried on a stretcher from out of the tumulus. Four priests held the stretcher on poles and brought it right up to the women. Some of them backed up against the wall in fright.

  It was hideous. But Arisha was not as squeamish as the others. She tried to get a closer look.

  She knew what it was. It was an Ob, a serpent seer. Obs were mediums that could talk to the dead and see the future. They were sensitive to the spirit world and were often called upon to validate the sacrifice.

  The Ob was a human being that sought to transform into a serpent, through a combination of sorcery and natural body modification. This one had its arms and legs cut off so that it was only a naked body that could wriggle and writhe like a snake. It lay on its stomach facing forward. It was bald with a white clammy skin underbelly, and a head and torso with scales. But the scales were not completely covering the body like a snake, but rather they were in sporadic patches all around, as if it was a magic spell that had failed. Its eyes were reptilian-slivered pupils and its tongue was split and three times the length of a normal human tongue.

  Like a snake, it defecated at will, and another priest would come and clean up the feces behind it on the stretcher.

  The thing made Arisha want to vomit.

  The Ob was brought up to each woman. The woman’s robe was torn off and the Ob licked her body from vulva to face in one upward motion. Upon approval, he was taken to the next one.

  When the Ob reached Arisha, it snickered with delight. Its inhuman eyes looked her up and down, causing a chill down her spine. But also, a pang of hatred for yet another evil to be wrought upon her in this world.

  A priest pulled off her robe.

  The Ob looked her up and down and cackled with a sleazy laugh.

  The Ob licked her.

  She shivered. It resurfaced the memories of her betrayal by Izbaxl years ago. She was also reminded of the courage she found within her to respond in self-defense. And she thought she would grab this tongue in like manner and cut it off, if she only had a dagger.

  But she did not have a dagger. And she was about to be offered up to the dagger in sacrifice to Nachash.

  But the Ob stopped, hissed, and made a choking cough.

  It was raised up to her face and glared into her eyes.

  She found all the anger in her soul to stare back in defiance.

  They may destroy my body, but they will not destroy my soul.

  Then the Ob went into a trance. Its eyes went back into its head, and it jerked and spasmed with a seizure.

  When it was done, its eyes reopened and it croaked out, “This wench is a chosen vessel.”

  It stopped even the gods, who turned to look at Arisha. She now felt more vulnerable under their penetrating gaze.

  The Ob continued, “I have entered the spirit realm and I have seen great and terrifying things. This is no ordinary being. Out of her womb will come forth a great and mighty warrior whose kingdom shall overthrow all kingdoms. Thus saith the Ob.”

  Arisha was in shock. What in heaven was this creature saying? She is no ordinary being? She is a chosen vessel? It made no sense to her.

  His fellow gods followed Nachash as he stepped over to Arisha and stared at her. His gaze was hypnotizing. She felt paralyzed and entirely at his mercy.

  He tilted his head trying to understand what he could not see. But then a huge grin came across his face. His fangs gleamed in the torchlight. From out of nowhere, six reptilian wings spread out behind his back creating a kingly presence of glory.

  Arisha lost her bladder.

  Nachash said, “Take this vessel and prepare her for the sacred marriage.”

  The other gods appeared shocked. Arisha did not understand why.

  Nachash turned back to them by the tumulus and they argued quietly amongst themselves.

  Arisha grabbed her robe and draped it back over herself protectively.

  Four priests grabbed her and escorted her out of the Circle back to the Nest.

  She would not be sacrificed to Nachash this evening. No, her fate was much worse. She knew she was to be impregnated by that malevolent monster.

  Flashes of that evening in Banias years ago intruded in on her mind. The pain, the horror, and the aftermath. It had taken years to put it behind her. But she now realized she had not put it behind her. She had only ignored it. And all the wellspring of emotion was rising in her because she knew it was going to happen again.

  She determined in her heart that there was no way she was going to let it happen again.

  Over by the tumulus, the gods conferred. Molech was conspicuously silent around his superiors in intellect. Ashtart was angrily determined.

  “You should not do this, Mastema,” she snapped. “You know what happened with my antediluvian plans of interbreeding.”

  “Yes,” he whispered thoughtfully. The Deluge frightened the Sheol out of all of them.

  Chemosh added, “And now we are only seventy.” He was referring to the original two hundred Watchers who came to Mount Hermon to defy Yahweh. All but seventy were bound into the earth by Yahweh’s archangels because of their mating with the daughters of men. This was why none of them had ever tried the hybrid mating again. None of them, except Ashtart.

  Ashtart said, “I tried again at Sodom with less. And I almost lost everything. Do you want to see all of Canaan go up in flames?”

  Mastema simply said, “Yes.”

  Chemosh said, “You cannot be serious.”

  A grin spread on Mastema’s face. And they understood he was not being entirely so.

  He said, “You heard the Ob’s prophecy. I doubt that it was intended for us.”

  Ashtart understood first. “You think this may be Yahweh’s chosen vessel.”

  Chemosh said, “The Seed of Eve.”

  Mastema said, “If I impregnate her and kill her after the child is born, then it will have to be my seedline whose kingdom will overthrow all kingdoms.”

  Ashtart giggled. “The anti-Seed.�
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  Chemosh chimed in with approval, “Yahweh is coming to dispossess us from the land. So if he wants to burn up his children’s inheritance like he did Sodom and Gomorrah, then let him burn it all. Let it all go up in flames.”

  Molech was titillated. He loved fire as much as he loved children. He loved children on fire. He wanted to create an entire valley in Canaan that would be devoted to passing children through the fires of Molech.

  Mastema quieted them all. “This must remain a secret. Tell no other gods. It will only increase our chances of discovery by the enemy, as well as those usurpers in our ranks who would seek to use it to their advantage.”

  Ashtart knew Ba’al was just such a usurper. He had the power to contest even Mastema, and would surely do so if given the chance. It was Mastema’s prestige that had saved Ashtart when Ba’al was about to bind her in the earth at Sodom. They had been at odds for millennia and Ba’al had finally bested her in the battle of the nine kings. But when he was about to leave her crushed under millions of tons of rocks, she had offered him a deal that turned his mind.

  Ashtart had the favor of Mastema in Canaan, and had been breeding the Seed of the Serpent that would war with the Seed of Eve. Since Yahweh himself in the Garden prophesied this enmity, Ba’al knew it would be his way of ingratiating himself to a superior in Mastema. By saving Ashtart and making her his submissive consort, he was building his own strategy for conquest.

  But Ba’al was in southern Canaan now with the Anakim. So he would not be privy to Mastema’s plans. Ashtart finally had leverage over Ba’al. It would only take some time before she could find a way to use it against him, and free herself from servitude at his command.

  But right now, there was blood to drink.

  • • • • •

  The four priests brought Arisha into the Nest to prepare her for the sacred marriage rite. The first stage was to ritually cleanse her in the waters of life in their cavern.