Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (91 page)

“White Knight Two to
Zulu-Sector-Three.”  Hashem picked up his second white knight and made the
L-shaped leap into Zulu Sector where the first white knight had gone missing. 

Hashem phased out of
the ascended realms before Shay’tan could say another word.  He needed to
mobilize his forces for what was likely to become the largest battle over a
critical resource planet since the Second Galactic War.

End
Book 1 of the Sword of the Gods Saga

‘The
Chosen One’

Begin
Preview – Book 2 – ‘Prince of Tyre’

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,183.02 AE 

 
(240 years ago)

Haven 1:  Eternal Palace

Eternal Emperor Hashem

Hashem

“He
has a right to know!” the dark-winged Angelic screamed as her labor pains
intensified. 

“She-who-is
forbids it.” 

The
Eternal Emperor Hashem paced the secret back room of his genetics laboratory as
though
–he-
were the expectant father.  “You must keep this child's
existence a secret.”

“You
and your stupid game of chess!” Asherah spat in an uncustomary bout of cussing. 
“Shemijaza is my husband!”

“He
should have thought of that before he launched a rebellion!”

For
millennia Hashem and Shay'tan had played chess to resolve their differences,
and if that didn't work, then they gathered their armies and went to war.  Neither
old god had gained dominion over the galaxy until one day Hashem's greatest
general rebelled.  Declaring himself to be the leader of a 'Third Empire,'
Shemijaza seized a string of planets too close to the old dragon's border to
quash without igniting an intergalactic war.  With the Sata'an Empire nipping
at his Galactic Alliance, the last thing Hashem needed was a civil war! 

Dark-haired,
dark-winged, with eyes so blue they were the color of the Haven sky, Hashem had
thought it a stroke of genius to send the beautiful, soft-spoken Asherah as an
ambassador to entice the rebel leader into rejoining the Alliance. 

“You
were sent to negotiate a treaty!" Hashem jutted his finger at the foolish
woman.  "Not to marry him!  I can't let the Third Empire gain
legitimacy by allowing Shemijaza to produce an heir!” 

“I'm
half-Seraphim.”  Asherah panted to control her pain as her contraction
intensified.  "When we consummated our marriage, my life became tied to
his.  I should be dead already!”

“You're
half shipboard Angelic,” Hashem said.  “You can survive if you so choose, as
you have already demonstrated by coming here!”

"We're
not farm animals to be bred and used as cannon fodder in your endless war
against Shay'tan!" Asherah clutched her belly.  "Our species is going
extinct and you do -nothing- to help us!  It's the only reason Shemijaza
rebelled!”

Hashem's
wild, white hair and bushy eyebrows jutted outwards as though he were a mad
scientist.  What had once been a symbol of his brilliance as a geneticist, his
ability to splice together disparate life forms to create new ones, had become
an embarrassing monument to his own incompetence.  The genes which carried his
army's animal features were recessive.  To maintain them, he'd been forced to
inbreed them until they had lost the ability to reproduce.  Nothing, not his
ascended powers, not the best in vitro fertilization methods his teams of
scientists could dream up, had been able to fix it.

“Moloch
is using your husband to gain a foothold in this universe,” Hashem warned.  “Do
you have any idea what will happen if the Evil One punches through? 
Shemijaza's child will be even more genetically evolved than he is!  You must
keep the child’s existence a secret!”

“I
saw no sign of this Moloch.”  Asherah gripped the bed rails as her contraction
built to its crescendo.  "Shemijaza had blackouts.  Times he seemed a bit
… callous.  Headaches.  He is sick!  Not evil.  The only evil I see is a
selfish old god who would deprive a child of his father!”

Dark
feathers flew everywhere as Asherah's instinct to take flight warred with her
need to remain Haven-bound because a newborn couldn't fly.  The child was
coming, whether he wished for it to exist or not. 

“The
child’s head is crowning, your Majesty” Dephar interrupted, his chief
geneticist who was acting as midwife.  He grabbed a scalpel and clamps with the
same practiced ease he used whenever he delivered any other genetics experiment
Hashem had cooked up. 

"Shemijaza!!!" 
Asherah threw back her head and screamed her husband's name. 

Her
cries awoke something Hashem had never felt before, perhaps it was pity?  Yes. 
He wished to alleviate her suffering so he wouldn't have to feel it himself. 
With no words to convince her this was the right thing to do, he resorted to
something he hadn't done since he'd ceased being mortal. 

"Take
my hand, Asherah," Hashem moderated his power so he could safely touch her,
"and let me help you bear this pain."   His hand grew warm where it
brushed her skin, the sensation igniting some mortal need he'd long forgotten
existed. 

"He
has a right to know!" Asherah slapped away his hand.   Tears streamed down
her cheeks as she focused her attention inwards, seeking to make contact
through the bond purebred Seraphim formed with their mate. 

Asherah
was only half-Seraphim, but he'd reason to worry she'd formed the bond which
granted her kind telepathy, no matter how far apart they were in the universe. 
He'd gone through great lengths to make the rebel leader believe she'd
committed suicide.  If Shemijaza found out Asherah had just borne him a son, he
would raze the Alliance into dust to get her back.  With Shay’tan sapping his resources,
there was no way he could withstand war on a second front.

“Goddess!!!”
Hashem shouted, not with his voice, but with his mind.  “I don't know how to
prevent this!”

The
scent of ozone and fresh flowers supplanted the sterile, medicinal scent of the
genetics laboratory.  A buzz that felt like tiny jolts of electricity filled
the air as golden light descended from the ethers and coalesced into a tall,
slender female with pointed ears and gossamer wings.  SHE rarely descended into
material form because it made her vulnerable, but keeping this child a secret
was paramount.  With a rustle of wings which sounded like crinkling cellophane,
She-who-is plastered a sympathetic expression upon her chiseled features and
stepped forward to console the grieving mother.

“I
wouldn't ask you to make this sacrifice if the fate of the universe didn't
depend upon it,” She-who-is's tone was hypnotically reassuring.  “Ki warned you
of this when you sang her Song to conceive your son, didn’t she?”

“Yes,”
Asherah sobbed.

Hashem
felt a twinge of envy.  Why had a mortal been given access to the Song of
Creation and not him?  By Ki, no less?  She-who-is's mother?

“Your
Eminence,” Dephar's snout bowed with awe at the appearance of the goddess who
ruled All-That-Is.  “The child is stuck in the birth canal.”

“I
shall deliver him myself," She-who-is lilted a perfectly shaped eyebrow in
Hashem's direction.  "He is that important."  SHE placed her hand
upon Asherah’s swollen abdomen to eliminate the Seraphim's physical pain. 
“Push, my daughter.  I wish to meet this prince of Tyre.”

The
child slid into HER waiting arms.  He didn't cry as others did upon being cast
out of their mother's womb, but looked at HER as though he could already
understand what she said.  He reached for her face as Dephar cut the umbilical
cord and gurgled a sound which sounded like 'SHE.' 

The
goddess' lips turned up in a smile, genuine this time as she recognized
something in the newborn which pleased her immensely. 

“You're
Lucifer, Bringer of Light."  SHE glanced over to the sobbing Seraphim, too
grief-stricken to hold the son whose conception had forced her to abandon her
husband.  "Be grateful, young prince, that this mortal loves you enough to
keep you hidden from your
-real-
father.  All-That-Is depends upon you
not falling into Moloch's hands.” 

Asherah
wept.  She-who-is reached towards her temple to grant her the mercy of wiping
Shemijaza from her mind, but Asherah slapped away HER hand.  Even Dephar gasped
at the Seraphim's audacity.

“Don’t
you play your memory games on me!” Asherah hissed.  She sat up in her childbed
as regal as a queen.  “I shall do as you ask, but the soul doesn't forget! 
Someday Shemijaza and I'll reunite!” 

Hashem
cringed.  She-who-is might be all-powerful, but Asherah understood the rules of
the larger game which bound even old gods such as himself.  Not quite
genetically evolved enough to achieve immortality on her own, the Seraphim was
too close to perfection to manipulate against her will. 

“So
be it.”  She-who-is wrapped the infant in a blanket and handed him to Hashem. 
“You must protect this child with your immortal life.  Train him to lead his
people on the path of balance or I'll hand him over to someone else who will.”

“Yes,
your Eminence.”  Hashem bowed.  “I'll raise him as though he were my own son.”

The
goddess' eyes burned gold with power.  With a disdainful flick of her gossamer
wings, She-who-is shimmered out of the material plain. 

Hashem
looked down at the child who had just been placed into his care.  The infant
didn't cry.  Not even a squeak.  He had his mother's delicate facial features,
but the snow-white wings and white-blonde hair of his father.  Instead of blue,
the child had inherited Shemijaza's eyes, so pale and blue they were silver
like the moon, a genetic throwback to a bloodline they had all believed to be
extinct.

Morning
Star…

Would
this child also inherit his father's intellect? 

Hashem
shivered even though he'd long evolved past the ability to feel the cold. 
Shemijaza had outsmarted him.  Outsmarted Shay’tan.  Outsmarted every creature
in the galaxy including She-who-is.  Asherah had brought warning of a new
threat snuffling around the rebel leader, one terrifying enough to cause the
half-Seraphim to abandon her mate and flee. 

Morning
Star… 

A
bloodline that was even older than She-who-is.  Heaven help them all if Moloch
got his hands on Shemijaza's offspring!

“Asherah?” 
Hashem presented the infant to the grieving Seraphim, beautiful in her grief. 
“Your son…”

“Go
away!”  Asherah curled up in a fetal position and refused to look at her
child.  “You wanted him, now you’ve got him!”

The
infant stared up at him, his eerie silver eyes filled with trust.  It couldn't
be good for the child to be rejected by his own mother.  Hashem knew from his
work as a geneticist that most rejected offspring simply withered and died. 

Morning
Star …

The
most genetically advanced bloodline in existence! 

Hashem
glanced around at the cold, sterile artifices of his genetics laboratory. 
She-who-is had given
-him-
the prize, and neither Shay'tan nor the
child's own father even knew it!  All he'd to do was make sure Moloch didn’t
find out, either.

He
took the infant and gave Asherah the space to grieve.

'Prince of Tyre'

Book 2 of the epic

Sword of the Gods Saga

Now available in print and via ebook

at various distribution platforms