Garden of Salt and Stone

by A. L. Burgess Jr.

  Once Lilith contained Isla Dora, her anger came to the forefront. She wanted nothing more than to silence the pest once and for all, but she thought better of it. The manuscript was the real prize, and if the old woman harbored the slightest piece of information that could help, then it was the queen’s duty to preserve that option. Revenge could wait until the book was recovered.

  Lilith increased her power and used it to squeeze the thrashing woman into unconsciousness. The demon queen rose to her feet and threw Isla Dora’s limp body to the ground. She turned her attention to Peter. “Where is the true Book of Souls?”

  Peter backed away and nearly lost his balance over the edge of the plateau. Righting himself, he stood tall and adjusted his glasses. “I don’t know exactly.”

  Lilith flapped her blackened wings and thrust forward, covering the few yards to Peter’s position in an instant. She trapped the smaller human against the gaping maw of the rift and the raging waters of the river. “Perhaps you need more incentive?”

  Before Peter could reply, Lilith placed her hands on his shoulders and triggered her power. Slowly at first and then rising in intensity, she forced energy through every aspect of Peter’s being until he radiated an aura of brilliant light.

  The pain Peter experienced was excruciating. He swayed under the strain. His consciousness ebbed and flowed like the tide during a winter’s storm. His mind wandered. He thought back to his days of teaching and his fondness at discovering a new student’s desire to learn. His life had been mundane and pedestrian, but Peter found great strength in his former, drama-free existence.

  With all eyes focused on Lilith’s attempt to shatter Peter’s will, no one saw Thomas until it was too late. His legs tucked close to his body, the young man came swinging in on a group of thick vines attached to the ceiling. Thomas gauged his arc of descent perfectly and impacted Lilith squarely in the ribcage, sending the demon sprawling to the earthen floor of the floating island.

  Thomas let go of the vines and unslung the shoulder bag containing the Book of Souls. “Here,” he said, forcing the satchel into Peter’s hands. “It’s yours.”

  “But the plan?” Peter stuttered out, trying to comprehend the incredulous turn of events.

  “I couldn’t sit by and do nothing,” Thomas replied, his attention fixed on the rising Lilith. “Watch out,” he said, pushing Peter to the side.

  Lilith flew across the plateau at full speed. She covered the distance in a fraction of a second and reached for Thomas. Using the queen’s speed against her, Thomas kicked off the ground to lessen the impact and used his free hand to grasp Lilith’s wing. Fighting against the demon’s considerable strength, Thomas threw his legs over her wing and used all his might to collapse the membrane. Lilith lost her flight characteristics and heeled over. Locked together, Thomas and the demon queen tumbled into the chasm and disappeared.

  “Thomas!” Hannibal’s scream broke the stunned silence. The grief visibly drained him, but after a few moments, the old warrior collected himself. “Concentrate on the remaining demons,” he ordered. “Spare no one.”

  Asmodeus and Sitri were caught off guard by the unexpected turn of events. The onrush of combatants forced the two demons into a defensive posture. They hurled power at the humans in a sloppy and wholesale manner. Their attacks landed few blows on the mercenaries and instead, wrought havoc amongst the reassembling guards.

  Peter removed the Book of Souls from its concealment within the shoulder bag. Casting the leather satchel aside, he gazed at the manuscript for a long moment. He found himself struggling to muster the courage to physically open the book. The loss of Thomas had dulled his resolve to continue. Peter could never have fathomed that the fate of creation would somehow hinge on his efforts—that the meaning of his existence would be forever entwined with the sought-after ancient manuscript or that his actions would cause irreparable harm to others. Now, it would seem, his worst fears had come to pass.

  Peter’s moment of reflection was cut short by Sitri. The demon broke free of the fight and lashed out at the professor. Sitri sent a wave of force careening toward the unheeding human. Cries of alarm rang out from the mercenaries, but Peter did nothing as he stared unfazed at the twisting, emerald energy bearing down on him.

  At the last moment, a crystalline tree metamorphosed from the earth directly in front of Peter. The tree grew to full height in an instant and deflected the inbound malice. It resonated sharply with a high-pitched bell noise issuing forth, but this time Peter was unaffected. He remembered the sights and sounds of the tree. It was there at the entrance to the Garden when he arrived and then again, in the queen’s throne room. Upon closer inspection, the crystalline structure appeared to be mimicking one of the Two Trees of the plateau. The only difference was the foliage. The crystal structure sported a replicated complement of leaves and fruit, while each of the legitimate trees looked as barren and lifeless as the landscape outside of the city.

  Sitri poured more power into his assault until the demon was blindsided by Gunnar and Elizabeth. The two mercenaries slashed and hacked at the demon until he had no choice but to disengage and protect himself.

  The threat temporarily neutralized, the crystalline tree transformed again. Shrinking in size and gaining thickness, the structure morphed into a man. Wearing tattered and torn robes, the bedraggled man stood before Peter smiling with admiration.

  “Nicholas?” Peter asked, surprised to find a familiar face. “It was you?”

  “Yes,” Nicholas answered in a weak and timid voice.

  “But what about—”

  “We can rejoice another time,” Nicholas said, checking the status of the demons behind him. Sitri was in the process of beating back the two mercenaries and Asmodeus had nearly freed himself from an encounter with Hannibal. Nicholas pointed at the book. “You have work to do.”

  “I do?” Peter looked at the manuscript curiously before extending it to the monk. “This is yours.”

  Nicholas cast a wary glance at the book. “It was never meant for me.”

  “What?” Peter asked, unsure of how stable the scruffy monk’s mental state actually was. “But you wrote it.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “I transcribed it, nothing more.”

  Peter stared at the monk waiting for some sign that the disheveled man was perpetrating a cruel joke, but after several moments, he took a deep breath and lowered the manuscript. “How do I use it?”

  “I do not know,” Nicholas replied, laughing lightly at the question. “I had faith.”

  Sitri broke free of his attackers and took to the air, aiming squarely for the humans on the plateau. Nicholas wasted no time and transformed into an eagle. He took flight and intercepted Sitri. Although the bird was no match for the large demon, he was more nimble and able to deal enough damage to Sitri’s eyes to significantly hinder the demon’s forward momentum. The monk continued his attack, forcing Sitri into a battle of aerial attrition above the Garden remnant.

  Peter took in the chaos and swallowed hard. His plan had fallen apart and his comrades were still in peril. Whatever reservations and shortcomings Peter had, he was not about to let them get in the way now. Propping up his waning courage, he stepped to the base of the Two Trees and opened the book.

  Peter saw nothing unusual in the pages of uniform lettering that ran the length of the ancient manuscript. It appeared the same, but slight alterations were beginning to take place. The ink of the evenly-spaced Latin text, which once had been so dark, now seemed to be diminishing with each passing moment. The off-white parchment, thick and rife with uneven blemishes, started to lose its opacity. Peter stared into the tome thinking the effect was an optical illusion but soon realized the book was changing.

  A faint outline of images began to appear on the near-translucent parchment of the ancient manuscript. Peter flipped back and forth through the book and found that each set of pages bore a different scene. Large green masses danced upon the book’s parchment and the movement, sim
ilar to a playing child, swept across several scenes. Slowly, they came into sharper focus and Peter realized what the pictures were.

  In one scene, Peter saw a young couple running carefree through tall grass. In another, he witnessed a hand picking fruit from a large tree. On the final pages of the book, Peter saw the Two Trees turn black and wither into their current state. He held the book up to confirm the images in the book were identical to the Two Trees in front of him. Without a shred of doubt, the Book of Souls was showing historical events connected to the objects around him.

  To test his theory, Peter held the book in the direction of Hannibal. Images of battle and the hardships of a warrior’s life littered the manuscript’s pages. Peter traversed across the rest of the mercenaries and the demons as well; each told a unique and different story through the parchment of the Book of Souls.

  The manuscript was a window that looked back in time—to things long past. Simply put, it was a record of all that had ever been. It surveyed the whole of Creation and displayed those moments that defined an individual’s existence. Every event, every person, and every instant of good or evil was contained within the stale pages of the dusty tome.

  With the battle raging in the chamber, Peter swung the book back to the Two Trees. He studied the images presented to him. Although he comprehended the context, he struggled with how to use the knowledge. The scenes were nothing more than snippets, hardly capable of conveying more than a visual reference to a historic moment. The object of the lesson eluded him.

  Peter redoubled his efforts. He studied the imagery as it rolled by like a film. He concentrated on the patterns of any perceived meaning or series that the manuscript was trying to show him. Slowly, Latin text overlaid the movie-like sequences. With each new scene, the text changed as if it was communicating in tandem with images depicted. Peter flipped through the pages of the manuscript until he came to the scene containing the Two Trees. He held the book out and concentrated solely on the letters that appeared. The text floated to the surface from across both pages. As it came forward, regular patterns coalesced over the images to form words. Each set repeated, forming a series of phrases.

  Peter read the Latin and translated, “Replace that which was taken?” He looked up to the intertwined trees and scanned the hundreds of fruit laying on the lifeless soil beneath them. The revelation hit him like a ton of bricks. The Book of Souls wanted Peter to perform a sort of penance—to atone for a sin that happened long ago. He was to locate the fruit Eve had taken from the Tree of Knowledge and restore it to its proper place. Peter drew a sharp breath. “Oh my god.”

  Chapter 21

  For millennia, the demon queen utilized an enormous amount of energy to create the city within the Garden of Eden. Although the metropolis gave Lilith a base of power to draw from, it did so at the expense of her freedom. The ongoing expenditure to keep the stone megacity in situ meant she could not stray far from its borders. As Lilith and Thomas fell through the bottom of Eden, she felt her energy rapidly drop off and diminish to nothing.

  Left only with her physical prowess, Lilith made a series of aggressive aerobatic maneuvers designed to throw Thomas off her back, but the human held fast to the base of her wings with both his arms and legs. Each wild swing in her increasingly erratic flight path caused the queen to lose an alarming amount of altitude, dropping her further away from Eden and closer to the threshold between the realms.

  Thomas looked back and caught a glimpse of the Garden hovering in the air above them. Where once the Garden had stretched to fill the sky, it was now fading from sight. Its earthen edges were beginning to blur and lose cohesion as if the greater distance was somehow causing it to recede from reality. Nearly obscured from view, the only noticeable hallmark he could make out was the massive amount of water turning to rain as it poured from the gaping fissure.

  Everything Thomas had heard about the Garden of Eden was coming true. Eden existed within a nether region between Creation and Hell. The path down was unidirectional and once an individual traversed into Lucifer’s domain, they could never return.

  Thomas resigned himself to whatever awaited him. The decision to push the queen into the rift had not been difficult to make. Lilith was undefeatable in battle, even more so when her two henchmen were at her side. With her out of the picture, Hannibal and the mercenaries would have a much better chance at completing the mission. Thomas came to understand one of the harsh lessons Hannibal was trying to teach him: when you are free, you can act for the greater good. It was lost on Thomas during his decades roaming alone in the shadows, but now he realized what it meant. He could do nothing as the queen’s captive, but given an opportunity, he could change the balance of Creation with a simple push. He sacrificed himself so his friends could succeed.

  Lilith made an abrupt turn in midair hoping to throw Thomas in the direction of her momentum. The maneuver caught Thomas off guard, nearly causing him to lose his grip, but he adjusted his center of balance and held on tenaciously. The demon queen groped behind her to dislodge him, but he shifted his position to stay just out of reach.

  “Fool!” Lilith screamed over the rushing wind. “Did you believe your arrival in Hell would be a welcoming one?”

  Thomas paid little attention to the queen’s rhetoric and instead, kept his eyes glued to the fading underside of the Garden of Eden.

  “The Fallen are without number and bored beyond measure,” Lilith said. “Your relentless defiling will be their utmost pleasure.”

  The queen’s words dredged up memories of the atrocities Thomas had borne witness to in Eden. His mind flooded with the sounds of souls screaming for mercy as the queen transmogrified them for entertainment. The echoes reverberated through his being even as he tried with all his might to erase them from existence.

  Lilith sensed the fear building within the human and used it to push him further into the unknown. “Shall we join my brothers and sisters then?” the queen asked, tucking her wings in behind her. She dove like a hawk, gaining speed and aiming for the center of the Avernus Sea.

  Thomas reacted instinctively. He held on to the top of Lilith’s wings where they emerged from her back and tried to lower his wind resistance profile by laying forward on the demon. In response, the queen increased her dive angle to full vertical. Thomas began to slip forward and quickly repositioned his grip to hold on to the bottom of the demon’s wing. He glanced one last time at the Garden of Eden as it became nothing more than a silhouette within the opaque sky.

  In one motion, Lilith heeled over and extended her wings. The amount of shear produced was tremendous. She felt the stubborn nephesh lighten and lose his grip. She rolled in the air and steadied her flight path. She locked eyes with Thomas and laughed wickedly as he flailed his arms and tumbled out of control toward the sea far below.

  Lilith gauged her location and turned her eyes skyward. A faint outline was the only remaining visible evidence that the Garden of Eden still existed. She spied a steady rain falling from the heavens and thrust her leathery wings forward. The demon entered into a circular pattern around the column of mist and rose quickly through the atmosphere in the direction of the water’s source.

  Peter held the Book of Souls in front of him and scoured the ground looking for the one fruit plucked from the Tree of Knowledge so very long ago. The manuscript highlighted all the emaciated, fig-type fruit, but showed no distinction between the tree of origin or picked versus fallen through natural causes. All the while, the Latin words for the phrase, Replace that which was taken, continued to cycle to the forefront. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Peter muttered. “It’s not that easy.”

  The ongoing battle in the Garden’s remnant continued to distract Peter. To his eyes, it seemed to be an evenly-matched fight. Hannibal and four mercenaries kept Asmodeus at bay, while Nicholas engaged Sitri. The contingent waylaid every attempt made by the two demons to circumvent their separate entanglements and attack Peter directly. The remaining mercenaries kept the guards occupied
and dealt with attacking the recently freed giant, Butch.

  Peter adjusted his glasses and turned his attention back to the problem at hand. He changed tactics and assessed the quandary as he would any other academic challenge. From his scholarly perspective, there was still a piece of the equation missing. The Book of Souls issued forth a need to be resolved, but it did not provide adequate information to find the solution. He suspected that finding the correct fruit was only half the quandary. Peter scanned the desolate branches of the Two Trees. Knowing exactly where to place the lost fruit would be the hard part. There was no doubt in Peter’s mind the problem was designed to be difficult as it was a safeguard against someone using the book for ill purposes.

  From behind Peter, a meek voice murmured, “Such a small thing, really—I’ve been asking for nothing but forgiveness ever since.”

  Startled, Peter wheeled about to see a young woman standing before him. She was in her late teens or early twenties. About five-and-a-half-feet tall with a slim frame, she had long, thick brown hair that fell to the midpoint of her back. Her fair complexion and rounded cheeks gave the young woman a cute innocence that was very alluring. The young woman’s dress was coarse and tattered, similar to that of a vagabond. When she brushed her hair away from her face, Peter recognized the dark blue eyes staring back at him. “Isla Dora?”

  She laughed at Peter with a more youthful version of Isla Dora’s cackle and moved beneath the Two Trees. The young woman sat down on their massive roots and gazed at the lifeless branches above her. “I was sitting right here when it happened.”

  “You’re Eve?” Peter said, staring at the woman incredulously. He was not able to catch a full glimpse of the women in the images the book offered, but nonetheless, there could be no denying that the girl standing before him was the first woman of Creation.