Dawn Apocalypse Rising (The Windows of Heaven Book 1)

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING

  Book 1 of The Windows of Heaven

  A novel series by K.G. Powderly Jr.

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  All Rights Reserved. 1st Edition Copyright © 2003 by K.G. Powderly Jr.

  Expanded edition Copyright © 2012

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover Art Copyright © 2012 James Cline, Kanion Rhodes Studio

  Printed in the United States of America

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  Dedication

  For my departed wife Dianne, who now dances before the Once and Future King. These books are a tribute to your patience, encouragement and caring.

  For Shannyn, Wes, and Laurelin Mae – no father could be more proud of his children and grandchild.

  For Rob and Jim, without whose belief in the fundamental worth of this project—a belief put to deeds by their time and creative effort on my behalf—I would have canned it and moved on. The Lord reward you both kindly and generously.

  For Katarina, whose friendship I will always treasure.

  Thanks also to Martin, that great lurking Sasquatch, who oversees web site and other essentials from a distance, where he always appears as a photographic blur in the background.

  For the Promised Seed – the suffering servant, wonderful counselor, mighty God, and the Once and Future King who waits to welcome us with those who are willing at Time’s End…

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter epigraphs appear from the following books with thanks and respect:

   All Bible quotations not from the King James Version (KJV) or Revised Standard Version (RSV) come from any of the following versions and will be identified accordingly:

   New International Version (NIV) © 1973 by New York Bible Society International

   New American Standard Bible (NASB) © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975 and 1977 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Ca.

   New King James Version (NKJV) © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

   Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary

   Flavius Josephus, Antiquities Of The Jews (circa 80-90 AD)

   E.W. Bullinger, The Witness of the Stars (1893)

   Bill Cooper, After the Flood, © 1995 New Wine Press, England

   Ethiopic Enoch (1 Enoch), translated by Richard Laurence, LL.D in The Book of Enoch the Prophet, Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co. (1883)

   Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch), translated by W.R. Morphill, M.A.

   The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, translated by Geza Vermes, © 1998, Penguin Books

   S.L.A. Marshall, World War I, © 1964 by America Heritage

   The Modern Past: Batteries of Babylon, ©1996 Lumir G. Janku in Anomalies and Enigmas Forum Library at enigmas.org/aef/library.shtml

   Donald E. Chittick, The Puzzle of Ancient Man – Advanced Technology in Past Civilizations? © 1998 by Creation Compass

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1: Cockatrice

  2: Envoy

  3: Archons

  4: Ashes

  5: Sphinx

  6: Orchard

  7: Gorge

  8: Wurm

  9: Dynasty

  10: Samyaza

  11: Intents of the Heart

  12: Firefall

  13: Firedrake

  14: Network

  15: Sky-Lords

  16: Star Signs

  17: Apocalypse

  Epilogue

  Appendix:

  About the Language Usage and Cosmology of the Seer Clan

  Glossary of People and Terms

  DAWN APOCALYPSE RISING | 7

  The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

  —Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV)

  After many of the soldiers had been seized in its mouth, and many more crushed by the folds of its tail, its hide being too thick for javelins and darts, the dragon was at last attacked by military engines and crushed by repeated blows from heavy stones.

  —Livy

  (A Roman historian, describing a dragon attack on the army of Regulus in Africa)

  And Enoch lived an hundred and sixty and five years, and begat Mathusala. And Enoch was well-pleasing to God after his begetting Mathusala, two hundred years, and he begot sons and daughters. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty and five years. And Enoch was well-pleasing to God, and was not found, because God translated him.

  —Genesis 5:21-24 (LXX, circa 250 BC)

  Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and had a son. And he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.”

  —Genesis 5:28-29 (NKJV)

  Prologue

  P

  eople could only sense the Shadow, not see it. Daybreak proved that much.

  Inside the monastery, incense smoke danced over Q’Enukki’s head like ghosts carrying silent petitions that seeped into the ten heavens through the thatched roof of the stone hall. Outside the east window, the sun over the mountains seemed odd, disconnected, as if it shone on some other world, in some other valley that existed only as a picture.

  The young men gazed at him, as if afraid to remove their eyes for just a second, lest he vanish.

  I will vanish. Q’Enukki had known for some time that his sons had reason to grieve. With their mother long dead, he had wanted this time for them alone, but the extended clan had nosed itself in as always.

  The hearth fire died before Q’Enukki spoke. “How were you finally able to send the others away?”

  The voice of his firstborn, Muhet’Usalaq, cut the incense haze like a sword. “They camp in the lower valley, and will go no farther. They ‘fear the Watchers will think their zeal small,’” he mimicked the mewling speech of one of his uncles, revealing premature frown lines in his mahogany face that Q’Enukki blamed himself for putting there.

  He reacts against all the childhood pampering from his mother and her sisters. Q’Enukki remembered—still unsure whether to laugh or cry. As a father, he had put a stop to it whenever he could. As a seer, he had been away from home far more than he would have liked. Many of the people camped below were from his wife’s side of the family. All that burden on the boy from just a name. If only there had been another way.

  Muhet’Usalaq. The contraction meant, “His death shall bring it.”

  Q’Enukki smiled grimly and realized that there had been no other way. “See that their clan chiefs get copies of the scrolls,” he said.

  “All of them?” Muhet’Usalaq furrowed his dark brows.

  Q’Enukki had written three hundred and sixty-six scrolls of law, prophecy, and science—some during his famous (and to many, infamous) voyage into the heavens. Others he had authored in mystic seclusion within sight of the Sacred Tree in Aeden’s Orchard, where E’Yahavah A’Nu’s Great Curse on the cosmos had become a physical pain in Q’Enukki’s bones.

  “In Aeden I aged over a century in three months, and could father no chil
dren afterward,” he whispered. His son would catch his meaning. That Q’Enukki had returned alive from there at all had established him as the “Great Seer” even in the minds of those who bitterly resented the idea. He added, “As for the texts, that press-printer contraption your brothers invented is fastest and best. Do not fret over scribal tradition. Ignore those clay tablet purists too. Send copies to all the world’s tribal chieftains.”

  “It will be done, My Father. I meant no disrespect.”

  Even Muheti uses the Formal Voice with me all the time now. Q’Enukki sighed, and laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I know this is unsettling. Do yet one more thing for me…” He whispered into the young man’s ear, “Whenever possible, think of the good times and laugh.”

  “We will.”

  “Oh, and this is very important…” Q’Enukki gazed into Muheti’s deep blue eyes that seemed to cover his soul like tossing waves over the dark abyss. “In warning the world, do not burden the children in my name, as the priests would. Heaven’s Comfort comes of your line—the A’Nu Ahqui—rest, not coercion. You will do this for me?”

  Muhet’Usalaq’s eyes questioned, but his head nodded.

  Q’Enukki turned again to face his other sons. “Very well, everything seems in order. I suppose it is time.”

  A voice among the young men trembled, “For the Sky Watchers?”

  Q’Enukki nodded.

  His sons exchanged glances filled with objections none dared voice. He could almost hear their worry like maggots eating away at their sense of perspective, leaving a rancid waste of silent panic. They felt, as well as he did, the awful presence that hovered in the hilly forest, unseen, waiting. They fear what they do not understand. Dread colors it darkly. Yet fear is appropriate—considering…

  He smiled for them. “Do not be afraid. Good is still good, and evil cannot hide its true nature forever. I must go now. We shall meet again. Where I go, someday you shall each follow. Our reunion will be joyful.”

  He rose from the circle of his sons and left the hall, passing through the courtyard, and out the stone fortress-monastery’s timber gate.

  The terrible presence grew more palpable with each step along the hilly forest path. Swirling fire-fly points of light danced around his head, as the earth itself hummed with a strange deep rhythm. The twisty lights seemed to wither the very fabric of existence around him until Q’Enukki felt dark things watching him from just behind that fluttering veil. The dark things wanted to tear through with fiery claws, and snatch him off the trail. Others guarded his way, invisible, protecting the fabric from penetration. The guarding ones were greater than the clawing things on the other side.

  The sky chariot sat in a hillside clearing a little north of the villa. A fishing-boat-sized horizontal teardrop of smooth reflective metal, it rested on living wheels of swirling light within swirling light that seemed to press inward toward some kind of center, odd dents in the same fabric of reality that the dark things hid behind. The dents pressed inward no matter which angle Q’Enukki tried to view them from—as if at right angles away from everything humanly knowable.

  Shining Watchers sat forward, enclosed in a transparent bubble arc that stretched across the wide front of the liquid-silver object, above the swirly-light dents in space. They peered out at him with what seemed a sad kindness; their bodies covered with dark calculating eyes that he suspected might evaluate a single man, or an entire world, with an absolute impartiality given them by the Three Aspects of E’Yahavah.

  Q’Enukki approached an opening that appeared in the fluid-metal-glass surface of the thing. A quicksilver bulge grew beneath it, not-quite-hardening into steps. Only then did he turn for a last look back at the fortress that bore his name, now almost completely concealed by forest.

  The sky went black before he could spot the ramparts, as if a celestial gryphon had passed its webbed wing in front of the sun.

  From far below, an unnaturally cold breeze carried the distant wails of those camped in the valley. Q’Enukki heard other voices too, hushed and closer, from the foliage where the trail opened into the clearing. His sons had not been able to resist the temptation to follow. He had no way to protect them now, neither to help them understand.

  The Watchers viewed the cowering brothers with what seemed a tolerant silence. Behind them, the normally green valley of Akh’Uzan lay in murky shadows from the untimely dark that was neither cloud, nor solar eclipse. An endless black sheet simply rippled across the sky.

  A tall, man-like Watcher guided Q’Enukki up the waterfall ramp, into a cabin of sorts. The thick liquid-metal surface of the enclosure healed itself to perfect smoothness behind them, sealing them inside a flattened bubble that was transparent on either side. The luminous being blinked huge dark eyes at him filled with warmth, and a veiled power that Q’Enukki could feel deep in his chest whenever they gazed at him—even from behind. He sometimes heard strange words in his head when those eyes turned his way.

  The Watcher motioned Q’Enukki into a reclining seat by one of the transparent sections of the bubble. It would have offered a magnificent view outside if not for the darkness. The chair gently grew several pairs of silvery restraint tendrils from its arms that wound their way about his body into a loose harness. The caress of the seat somehow removed his apprehension. He was among friends, after all—friends he trusted.

  The Watcher spoke. “Welcome back, Son of Atum.”

  “Thank you for waiting, Samuille. I trust I was not too long?”

  The Watcher smiled. “It is the appointed time.” This time the Being spoke only with his eyes, inserting words directly into Q’Enukki’s mind.

  “Yes, I suppose it is. My sons will be alright, I trust?”

  “They will remember only a moment of darkness, then the flash of our departure. For the rest, you have trained them well.”

  Q’Enukki recalled his first experiences with the Watchers and their mind-speech. It had taken some time for him to realize that they could not actually read his thoughts—only project their own words into his mind.

  From the time of the Beginning, there had been tales of their comings and goings among the children of Man, but these had always been rare errands of great import to special seers among the Zaqenar elders. That either the Watchers or elders should see him in that group at the relatively young age of three-hundred and sixty-five years still surprised Q’Enukki. Especially since his first experience with a Watcher had not been with a holy one, but with the Fallen.

  Those manipulators had been happy to let him believe they could see his very thoughts, when really they had just cleverly suggested ideas to him to mold his perceptions into predictable patterns—all because their captain, Uzaaz’El, had wanted something from him. Q’Enukki still marveled at the darkening of such powerful beings to the point where they thought that he—a man—had any authority to intercede for them! What were they thinking?

  Weirder still, they had thought he would do so even after he had caught them in their lies. It was as if they could not even see the problem!

  How different from Uzaaz’El this Samuille was. Uzaaz’El had always overpowered Q’Enukki’s senses by his presence—with a stifling hunger from a calculating, amplified personality that always seemed to want something and somehow had a child-like need for his approval. Bald, high-browed head sheathed in pale glow, with dark white-less eyes of serene arrogance, the self-styled Watcher “Upholder” spoke just a bit too much in his musical voice about his benevolent plans for humanity to be believable.

  Samuille projected a different sort of calm—a genuine willingness to subdue his power rather than a barely restrained necessity that he do so for some hidden motive. Q’Enukki felt he could speak freely with Samuille without fearing the perversion of his words into something monstrous.

  That is the crux of all this, is it not—something monstrous?

  The question angered him, even now.

  “Why do we need all this?” Q’Enukki said, motioning at t
he surrounding sky chariot as though it were a useless extravagance. “The last time we merely traveled in a flash of light. Simple, dignified, no machinery—I assume this is some sort of machine. It looks as though it could be one.”

  The vehicle itself made a noise below their feet—some escaping gas that sounded like… it could not be laughter! The restraint tendrils around Q’Enukki’s middle gave a sudden yank that forced his breath out.

  “You need air and materiality must be maintained this time,” the Watcher said. “You must be patient until the time of your quickening. We have errands on the way that require you to be in your present state a little longer. Most of our journey will be in the lower five heavens. We will only be fully translated to the higher ones after our final stop.”

  Something rumbled below, as if the world itself was vomiting out something it could no longer stomach.

  Or someone.

  Normal daylight flooded in through the bubble’s view-ports, as Q’Enukki’s body pressed deep into his seat by some crushing invisible force. He could turn his head just enough to watch the ground fall away beneath him. The mountains around Akh’Uzan shrank to wrinkles on a greenish brown patch of land that soon retracted into a contoured blob north of a dark ocean. The hazy gold that was merely the Face of the First Heaven faded to white, and then to ever darkening shades of blue, until it too fell off below. The First Heaven’s ebony night engulfed the chariot, filled with stars so clear and crisp that he felt he truly saw them for the first time.

  What Q’Enukki had long ago deduced to be the ‘planet’ Earth shrank to a jeweled curve that receded ever rearward. The pressing sensation dwindled then stopped. He felt himself float within the restraints of his harness and laughed. Could Samuille be wrong? Has my quickening come?

  No. The neck pain from hunching over his scrolls still bothered him.