Echoes of Avalon (Tales of Avalon Book 1)

by Adam Copeland

  Lokutis narrowed his eyes and chewed on his lower lip. The horizon behind Marduk’s head had become deep purple, with occasional streaks of lightning. His crimson host shifted uneasily, glancing nervously at their god, and Lokutis could sense his people were doing the same.

  He turned to his trusted advisor. “Give us a moment, will you Akahamet?”

  Akahamet blinked in surprise at the request, but dutifully bowed at the waist and withdrew a respectful distance. Marduk likewise made a sharp gesture to his herald, who seemed pleased to put distance between himself and the feuding gods.

  “A sanctuary?” Marduk said at last, bitterly. “One of the hidden realms created for those Nephilim beloved of Jhove? That is precisely the last place I should go. Jhove perceives you and me as monsters. Freaks! Mistakes!” He allowed a moment for the words to bite, and they did. Then he said, “But the Elohim, the Shining Ones, Jhove had pity on them even though they had the same Grigori fathers and mortal mothers as we. And why? Because they were beautiful? Bha! Should I force my way into one of their kingdoms hidden behind walls of air, Jhove would strike me down in a heartbeat. No Lokutis, I intend to hide this face in a realm even Jhove cannot reach.”

  At Marduk’s words, Lokutis remembered the dreams from earlier that morning, followed by the memory of an angry man beating him with a switch. Fatherless bastard. So many accusations. Then a woman, throwing herself across his bleeding body, taking the lashings and pleading for the man to stop. Yes, the Nephilim, the Elohim, they were mistakes. Never meant to exist. Incomprehensible creatures, born different, children of the Grigori, the Watchers. These were servants of Jhove who were sent to teach mankind, but instead ended up falling from grace and being banished for lying with mortal women.

  Lokutis closed his eyes and rubbed his temple. The image of the woman being strangled by the angry man wouldn’t leave his thoughts. He rubbed harder when the memory turned to the woman’s eyes going lifeless, her head lolling to one side. He opened his eyes and stopped the rubbing. It wouldn’t pay to show signs of weakness before his fellow god. Even as he told himself this, though, he thought of the angry man brushing a spider into a jar, and tossing it away. Somehow that image, the hairy creature in its glass vessel, was worse than the memory of his mother dead at her own father’s hands.

  What Marduk desired was not unfounded, so Lokutis was stern but not unsympathetic when he said, “The Plane of Shar-On is not a place one can go to. If you truly are looking for a change of habitat, then you should invade a sanctuary. If for no other reason than because it is our birthright. We belong there just as much as the Shining Ones.”

  Marduk ground his teeth. “I have reason to believe Jhove will lay waste to this world he created, to wipe it clean of all the mistakes that populate it. Just as he did to this accursed place eons ago.” He thrust his finger at the giant tower that loomed in the background. Its uppermost portions had become veiled by heavy grey clouds. “But it won’t be a localized event this time. It will be the entire world. And I intend to be gone from here, and not in an Elohim fishbowl, either, where it will be easier for Jhove to see that he missed one of his mistakes.”

  “Who is paranoid now? Wherever did you come by such prophecy?”

  “The signs are all around you, Lokutis, if only you would look. Mostly it says so in the stars. You would know that if you spent some time outside that cave of yours. Even the fool villager crafting that giant ark outside this valley knows it.”

  It was Lokutis’ turn to pace.

  “Really Lokutis,” Marduk growled, no longer staring at the empty space where the pillars of Mizkift had stood. His voice was now full of soothing and rationale, at odds with the sweat that started to bead on his pate. “If I am wrong, then I will destroy myself in a blaze of white Mizkift-light. If I am successful, then I will enter either an airless field of energy and perish, or enter a new world and you will never see me again. In any case it will be a boon to you. My empire will need a god.”

  A bead of sweat fell from his temple. His smile was strained.

  Lokutis’ eyes narrowed as he returned the big man’s gaze, weighing all the information and possibilities. The sky was now dark and distant thunder rumbled. The gentle desert breeze was now a full-grown gale.

  “Liar!” Lokutis at long last cried, stabbing an accusing finger at Marduk. “Surely you must take me for some kind of fool with this preposterous excuse! I still say you are up to no good...and in this world, not the Plane of Shar-On!”

  Marduk dropped all pretenses of calm and civility. “You miserable wretch! You had this planned all along, didn’t you? You never had any intention of handing over the Mizkift! You mean to take my gold by force, don’t you?”

  “Don’t change the subject!” Lokutis shouted. “This is about you taking my God-Cake and using it against me!”

  A shouting match ensued and they gestured furiously at one another. Their respective camps held hands firmly to sword hilts and their eyes flicked from one enraged god to the other.

  Inevitably, somebody drew a sword, setting into motion a scraping chorus of metal drawn from sheaths on all sides.

  “Lokutis, this is your last chance. Relinquish the God-Cake or I will squeeze from you the knowledge of how to retrieve it myself.”

  “I’d like to see you try!” Lokutis shot back.

  Marduk raised his wrists and banged together the metal jewelry.

  At the sound, the women slaves tugged apart their shackles, made space between themselves, and commenced to whirl the chains above their heads. The once demure eyes were now intense and focused.

  Lokutis bared his teeth at these women, who, as it turned out, did not have the hard bodies of dancers, but the hard bodies of warriors.

  Marduk’s force now stood one hundred twenty to Lokutis’ one hundred.

  “I thought you might try something,” Lokutis sneered. He snapped his fingers as he had done earlier to drive the sphinx away.

  The earth rumbled and shook, and outside the ring of columns, forms rose from the ground. They spilled sand and dirt from their bodies. They were pale and dirty giants, bipedal like a man, and stood another man’s height above Marduk. Their limbs were long and deformed with gnarled muscles. Many were bow-legged or hunched, others better formed, but all bearing the heavily muscled bodies of labor and the scars of battle. Naked, hairless, their heads were oblong. Their mouths hung open and trailed strands of drool. These creatures numbered ten and circled the meeting place, encompassing Marduk’s forces—including his warrior women.

  After a dramatic pause, Marduk spoke. “You can call upon all the help you want, but you and your menagerie of freaks will not keep me from what is rightfully mine.”

  Lokutis tsked. “Come now, is that any way to talk about your Nephilim brothers?”

  “I no more claim these creatures as brother than the Elohim claim you and me. And I tell you, Jhove is coming soon to cleanse this world of such as these,” Marduk responded.

  “Enough of that ridiculous story! It is obvious you have treachery in mind!” Lokutis gestured toward the warrior women.

  Marduk clenched his fists, drew a deep breath and with his unnatural voice rising as he spoke, shouted, “Give me the firestone you insolent little bastard!”

  Lokutis froze at the word. His face contorted into a caricature of itself―fangs grew from his upper jaw and his eyebrows turned into bat wings above slitted animal eyes blazing lavender. A shimmering aura surrounded his body that seemed to melt his clothes away and his stature tripled in size, becoming a muscled giant. Great bull horns sprouted from his head, toppling his ornate helm, which fell to the sand. He held out fists engulfed in balls of purple flame.

  “How dare you talk to me like that!” he growled in an otherworldly voice.

  No sooner had Lokutis started his transformation than Marduk commenced one of his own. He too grew in stature, but not as much as Lokutis. His fangs lengthened, and his eyes melded into one great cyclopean fireball. He snatched the s
erpent shaped bracelet from his wrist and made a flinging gesture. It elongated in his hand and turned into a fiery whip.

  “Your true form does not frighten me! Jhove will not have to wipe you from the face of the earth, for I will!”

  “Woe!” cried a new voice. “For the hour is at hand!”

  The opposing forces turned in the direction of the voice.

  There, sitting on top of a column, was the sphinx. Its head rotated oddly.

  “Woe to the beasts, the creeping things, and the birds of the air!”

  “I told you, Lokutis, your monsters will not stop me!” Marduk exclaimed, shaking the whip at his adversary. It writhed like a living thing, throwing off sparks.

  Lokutis scowled. “Deception does not become you. That is one of your agents, sent from the start to distract me.”

  “Son of Ea,” the winged creature said to Marduk, who started at being addressed as such. “Your time has come! Hewn down by the messenger you shall be! There is not even hope of resting among the stars!”

  Marduk turned to Lokutis. “What trickery is this? First you make Mizkift disappear without the aid of a capacitor, now you know the true name of my father?”

  “Long wanderings!” The beast now turned to Lokutis. “Slow fade! Power drained from your heel! The green man will cut you down and send you to the venomous cave. Only in the last days will you be set free again, just long enough to be destroyed by the bridge-god on the rock of Ragnor! Woe!” The sphinx took flight and flew away from the column in swooping arcs, down the valley, to the scene unfolding there.

  The mouth of the valley had become a swirling mass of thunderheads, a vortex crisscrossed with lightning. Something that looked like an ocean of water and light was gurgling forth from this tunnel as from an overturned urn, splashing and foaming its way down the valley, breaking against the rocks and hurling loose boulders in front of it.

  Wading through this miasma was a titanic figure around whose ankles the water broke. Humanoid in form, it stood almost as tall as the nearest cliffs and light radiated from its body. It wore richly decorated armor, and girded about its waist was a broad belt with a sword in its scabbard. The light-being grasped in both hands a scythe, which it rested on one shoulder as it strode forward. Spreading from its back were great wings opening and closing like respirating lungs. These looked for a moment like clouds, but soon coalesced into solid pinions.

  The first impression was of sheer size, a column of light, radiating mist. But the being’s head was what riveted one’s attention, and inspired terror.

  Whereas its body glowed, its head was absolutely ablaze with fierce lightning. It had not one but four faces, rotating above its shoulders like the sphinx’s. The first face was nominally human, with eyes, nose and mouth. The next was a bird of prey, with piercing eyes and a raptor’s hooked beak. Another rotation revealed a snorting bull, and the final, a roaring lion.

  All who beheld the creature were stricken immobile. It wasn’t until a great horn sounded that Lokutis and the others awakened and turned to see where the sound was coming from. A similar creature had perched on the mountaintop and bellowed through a long trumpet. Extended sonorous blasts shook the foundation, causing rocks to slide from the cliffs and the ground to shake.

  With the first trumpet blast, large raindrops pelted the dirt, the wind picked up, and thunder and lightning rent the sky. A gushing noise drew Lokutis’ attention to the spring where he had splashed his face that morning. It hissed and frothed as if a subterranean sea was rising to the surface.

  Servants and soldiers broke and ran in every direction. They collided and scrambled over the top of one another, forgetting in their panic that only moments before they were prepared to put their swords through one another. Marduk whipped his people, cursing them to stay put.

  Akahamet stood firm at Lokutis’ side. “What are they?” he asked, a mixture of fear and awe in his voice.

  Lokutis looked on with disbelief. His form shrank from the bull-horned monstrosity back to that of a slight man. His frame shimmered and his rich clothing reappeared.

  He said simply: “Archangels.”

  “I am with you, my Lord,” Akahamet said, reaching out and touching his master’s forearm. Lokutis barely took notice. The storm angel drew back its scythe and cut down Lokutis’s deformed giants. It hooked their bodies and flung their severed torsos into the air. Another swipe sent crimson-and-black-clad corpses scattering.

  The trumpet blared without cease now, the rain plastered Lokutis’s hair and clothing against his skin, and the scythe-wielding archangel was almost upon them, reaping its grisly harvest.

  To his credit, Marduk stood his ground and lashed out with his whip, sending bolts of red energy at the thing. But it was to no avail, for the bolts passed through it as if it were made of mist. Marduk cast aside his whip and the sparking, sputtering weapon turned back into a coiled piece of metal. Even as the scythe bore down on him, he raised his fist and raged.

  The weapon passed through him swiftly, yet did not cleave him in half. He went rigid, and a ghostly image of himself was ripped from his body in two pieces. The top half was Marduk’s face, contorted in torment, and the image faded into the wind. His body collapsed. On the ground his head lolled to one side and Lokutis could see that his eyes were glazed with cataracts as if he’d been dead for hours.

  “My lord, look out!” Akahamet cried and pushed Lokutis aside.

  The scythe plunged. Lokutis crashed to the ground and saw Akahamet take the blow. As the man’s body fell on top of him, Lokutis saw Akahamet’s forlorn specter float away. He struggled out from under the body, but froze momentarily when he made contact with Akahamet’s white lifeless eyes.

  He snapped out of his horror. The archangel stood above him, raising the scythe.

  A wall of water engulfed him first, obscured his assailant, and lifted him off the ground and swept him away.

  He flailed in a turbulent current, reaching and grasping for some sort of hold, hoping he wouldn’t be pounded against one of the stone columns. His lungs started to burn, and he struggled out of his breastplate and cape. When he was free of the metal, the current popped him to the surface.

  The landscape, or lack of thereof, was now completely different.

  Gone was the threatening archangel. Gone was his tent. Gone were Marduk’s corpse and the gilded elephant. Even the meeting place, with its altar, throne, and amphitheater were gone, replaced with a foaming, swirling, disorienting sea. Though much of the tower was still visible, the tips of the valley’s mountains protruded from the water, and those were quickly being swallowed.

  Lokutis flailed around to find some haven of safety. He had no immediate foothold on anything, and he considered swimming for the tower, even though it was leagues away. And should he make it, then what? Hide in its honeycomb vaults in the sky, snacking on rats?

  He squinted into the driving wind; the rain beat his face and he couldn’t see. He paused in his treading water long enough to shield his eyes with one hand.

  The sea-foam was lifting off the surface of the water and gathering in the air like a flock of birds, and then migrating towards a light in the sky that was brighter than any sun. It lit the foam around him, and made it glow like the luminous plankton of the oceans.

  Except it wasn’t plankton.

  Roughly the size of his fist and alternately round or spherical, depending on how you looked at them, they were little creatures covered in eyes. Human eyes.

  They turned like fiery little wheels and bobbed like bubbles in the water. They behaved just like sea-foam, but then rose like smoke or mist, pausing just long enough to stare curiously with that multitude of eyes at Lokutis as they passed by.

  “Thrones,” he said, calling the angels by their name in the hierarchy of the Heavenly Host. Never had he heard of the beings coming anywhere near Jhove’s earthly creation. Not since it was first made many, many millennia ago. Lokutis now understood what he had seen earlier, pouring out of the maels
trom in the sky like water out of a gourd. It had been the Heavenly Host coming forth to purge the earth of its wickedness and its monsters. Monsters like him.

  Marduk had been right.

  The last of the shining beings floated away from him and then suddenly something obscured the light in the sky and cast him in shadow. When his eyes had adjusted, he got a good look at what had blocked his vision: It was a giant boat, simple but sturdy. Essentially a cube with another cube on top, a sort of cabin surrounded by a deck.

  And just when he thought things couldn’t get any more surreal, Lokutis saw all manner of animals gathered on the deck, in particular a pair of giraffes staring down at him as if he were the oddity.

  A violent undulation of the water took the vision from his sight and he was cast among the flotsam. Tree branches, uprooted shrubs, the carcasses of dead birds and domesticated animals, and even the corpses of his own servants. Another heave of water shifted his view again, this time setting him before the great tower, still far away.

  The light in the sky burned above the tower like an eye, lighting up the carved cylinder of the mountain. He was amazed to see that a significant portion of it still rose above the waters, but the dark currents clawed at its stones like demons. An arch collapsed and sent a portion of the shell wall into the water, sending up a wall of spray. Though this caused more of the innards on the upper tiers to be exposed, the lower ramparts survived the assault.

  The last of the Thrones disappeared into the light, and the light began to dim. The tower darkened with shadows, starting at the base then working their way up to the top. As the shadows grew, a chill that had nothing to do with the water crept up his spine and he watched helplessly as the light slowly collapsed in on itself. The light winked out. The world became bereft of light and warmth, as if a door had closed. Only the cold rain, the turning waters, and the tower, somewhere in darkness, remained to watch Lokutis’s slow death.

  As he struggled to stay afloat, a revelation came to him. The entire world was destroyed, wiped clean this day. Yet the simple villager, Noam, and his family most likely survived in the ark. This wasn’t the end of all things.