Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (61 page)

Or maybe not…  If
there was one thing he'd learned from meeting with the Halifian leader and
listening to him brag, it was how to set up a merry goose chase so you could
hit the
real
target…

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.07

Haven-4:  Galactic Youth Training Academy

Colonel Raphael Israfa

Raphael

Raphael found the
Alliance’s most formidable general in the quarantine chamber, reduced to a
crumpled pile of sobbing feathers.  She sat there, rocking their infant son,
praying to She-who-is to spare his life.  It was a surreal juxtaposition, the
cold, sterile Angelic nursery, the sobbing mother, and the IV’s, monitors,
wires, and other equipment hooked up to the tiny baby clinging to life in his
mother’s arms.  She'd wrapped her wings around herself and their son,
enveloping him in her soft, downy feathers as she instinctively tried to shield
him as she sobbed helplessly upon the floor.

“Jophie,” he was
hardly able to speak through the lump that threatened to burst his throat.  “I
am here.”

Jophiel cried harder,
pulling her wings around herself.  He sat beside her, pulling she and the son
he'd never met into his embrace.  Jophiel shifted one wing so he could move
closer, he shifted his other to complete the feathered cocoon.  Their wings
touched in front as they shielded their baby from whatever force was trying to
take him from them.  Raphael's golden feathers interlocked with her snowy white
ones in a basket weave of parental protection.

“Hey, little guy,” he
murmured, seeing his son in person for the first time.  “Daddy is here.”  He
touched Uriel's tiny hands and was glad the baby grasped one finger.  He was
tiny for a 4-month-old, thin and discolored like a child who had not eaten for
months.  Anger surged through his veins at the sorry state of his son.  Why
hadn't the nursery alerted them sooner?

“He won’t eat….”
Jophie sobbed.  “All he does is cry.  They call it the wasting sickness.  It's
become common amongst the hybrid races and they don't know why."  She
rested her head upon his shoulder.  "All our great technology, and they
don't even know what causes it!”

“Shhhh….”  He kissed
her temple.  “Who knows what purpose She-who-is has?  But it's not your fault. 
You were only doing what our Emperor demanded.”

Jophie rested her head
upon his shoulder, her eyes red-rimmed from nonstop crying.  Uriel's chest
heaved in hiccups as he fought to inhale each and every breath.  His tiny wings
twitched as though some great pain wracked his little body.  Raphael fought
back tears as he, himself, tried to keep things together for her, for his son,
for himself.  He knew if he succumbed to the emotions threatening to overwhelm
him, he would fall into a pit of despair so deep he might never find his way
out.

“Does the Emperor
know?” 

Did the Emperor they
served even
care
about the pending expiration of so tiny a cog in the
wheels of his great Alliance? 

“I don't know,” she
sighed.  “Even if he did, there is nothing he could do for him.”

“I thought…”

“Contrary to popular
belief, the Eternal Emperor is neither omniscient nor omnipotent!”  Bitterness
marred her voice.  “He is powerful.  And a great geneticist.  But he doesn't
have the power to grant life.  That power is reserved to She-who-is.”

“I wouldn't know,”
Raphael said.  “I have only ever seen him once, at a distance.  I just
thought….”

“The Emperor will do
nothing
to help us!” Jophiel exclaimed.  “I begged him to let me retire.  I have
borne the Alliance twelve babies and given them all over to him without
question.  I didn't want to give this one up, Raphael!  I didn’t!  But if
-I-
refuse to replenish our race, the other females will follow suit!"

Sobbing, she buried
her face into Raphael's shoulder. 

"Damn him!  Damn
him and his shortsightedness in creating a race of beings that would breed
itself into extinction!!!”

Drawing her close,
Raphael rocked with her, both parents instinctively breathing each labored
breath along with their tiny son as fought to cling to life.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.07 AE

Ascended Realms

Asclepius – an old god

Asclepius

“Asclepius, I have a
favor to ask…”

“What is it, old
friend?” 

Asclepius reached out
with the neutrinos comprising his consciousness to mingle with his fellow old
god.  Despite being an ascended being, Hashem had chosen to remain bogged down
in the heavier, semi-corporeal state of the material realm.  It took a long
time, in ascended deity terms, to communicate with his brethren.  Asclepius
waited for Hashem to finish pulling his physical form through the barrier that
separated matter from what mortals called the spirit-world.

“You're a physician,”
Hashem said.  “I need your help.”

“You know it's
forbidden for me to interfere unless I descend, like you,” Asclepius said. 
“But perhaps I could answer questions.  What do you need?”

“I need help saving
the life of a small child,” Hashem said.  “I'm a geneticist, not a physician. 
I can improve life from its building blocks, but I'm not good at saving life it
if things go wrong.  The child is dying.”

“You were warned when
you spliced together your armies that there would be consequences,” Asceplius
said.  "The species were genetically incompatible.  You should have
followed your own dogma and allowed them to evolve those traits
naturally."

“The child is
innocent,” Hashem said.  “I don't believe
SHE
would hold a tiny infant
responsible for
my
mistakes.”

“Who is this child?”
Asceplius asked.

“The son of my highest
ranking general,” Hashem said.  “He has the wasting sickness.  We haven't been
able to figure out why some children simply lose the will to live.”

Asceplius sighed,
pondering how much to tell.  Integrated into the consciousness of She-who-is,
fully ascended beings began to approach omniscience.  Not true omniscience, as
the knowledge they had access to was either via their own connections, or those
belonging to the goddess.  But it was close enough that whenever they focused
their thoughts upon a single problem, all available information sprang into
their minds unless, for some reason,
SHE
wished to keep that information
secret. 

“Why do you choose to
remain in an in-between state when you could have the power other ascended
beings have?” Asclepius asked, not for the first time.

“Each galaxy has old
gods who refuse to leave,” Hashem said.  “It’s not like she prevents me from
ascending.”

“Unlike that old
rascal Shay’tan!” Asclepius snorted.  “He is barred from the higher realms
because he refuses to play by her rules!”

“You could always
descend,” Hashem suggested.  “I would really enjoy some company down there. 
It's lonely being the only ascended being in the galaxy besides Shay’tan.”

“And I would pay the
same price
you
have paid,” Asclepius said.  “Ignorance.  It takes
time
to pull a physical form back and forth between the realms.  I don't like being
disconnected from the stream-of-consciousness of She-who-is.”

“Will you help me?” 
Hashem's thought patterns approached a state of pleading.  “I have gone and
botched things and now the child of my only real friend is paying the price.”

“She-who-is wouldn't
target a child for your meddling,” Asclepius said.  “It’s not like you're the
only old god who amuses himself by dabbling in the material realms.”

“I don't think
SHE
will mind if you enlighten me,” Hashem said.  “Do you have any idea what causes
the wasting sickness?”

“When you created your
armies,” Asceplius said.  “You created physical shells enticing enough to lure
spiritual consciousnesses out of the upper realms to finish evolving.  When you
did so, you bound yourself, and them, to the rules of the material realm.”

“I don't understand,”
Hashem said.  “What does that have to do with the wasting sickness?”

“Why do you refuse to
leave your naturally evolved subjects to fend for themselves?” Asceplius asked.

“They are like my own
children,” Hashem said.  “To abandon them like you and the others have done … I
just couldn't.”

“Then why do you
demand that the beings you created do what you, yourself refuse to do?”
Asceplius scolded.  “They incarnated back into mortal form to
experience
the
pleasures of the material realm … and then you turned around and denied it to
them.  They are not cattle to be bred for slaughter so you can perpetuate your
own military might!”

“But the hybrids face
extinction,” Hashem said.  “Within three generations, they will die out.  I
lost the root race.”

“If I tell you how to
save this child,” Asceplius warned, “there will be consequences.  What Jophiel
does, the others will follow.”

“If her child dies,”
Hashem said.  “It will have the same result.  Jophiel begged me not to give up
this child.  She wishes to be with the father and raise him as her ancestors
did before inbreeding became a problem.  If the child dies, I'll lose her
anyways.”

“The inbreeding is
your own fault,” Asceplius scolded.  “The hybrid races lived naturally until
your constant intrigues with Shay’tan forced them all into the military.  Is it
any wonder the lifesparks are refusing to inhabit the shells you offer them
anymore?”

“How can I fix this
problem?” Hashem asked.

“As you're so fond of
saying, old friend,” Asceplius answered, “It's your choice.  You must decide
whether to allow Jophiel to follow her heart, or allow her child to die so that
you can maintain the status quo.  Either way, the current course is unsustainable.”

“Jophiel is like a
daughter to me,” Hashem said.  “I choose to pay the price.  How do I solve this
problem?”

“You created the
hybrids out of mammals,” Asceplius said.  “Mammals will choose starvation over
the denial of physical comfort.  In your effort to maintain genetic diversity,
you have forgotten this fact.  You separated them from each other, into cold,
sterile environments, until the most physical amongst them have started to
waste away.”

 Hashem pondered the
solution Asceplius suggested. 

“I could never
understand this need to be touched,” Hashem said.  “But I see it in my
experiments all the time.  I have spliced together countless perfect
adaptations, only to have them die when their parents reject them.”

Asclepius resisted the
urge to chastise Hashem about his cluelessness.  The other old gods jokingly
called Hashem a trans-dimensional alien.  Never been in the material realms
before, didn't 'get' it.  Hashem spent too much time living in his own head and
not enough in the ‘real’ world even though he'd chosen to linger in the
material realm.  It was rumored that She-who-is had paired the not too
'street-smart' Hashem to play against the earthy Shay’tan on a wager with the
Dark Lord.