Four faces in the darkness, their features illuminated in the light of the flames. Around the fire were all manner of pots and jars, some half-opened which wafted of something sweet and putrid. Along the sides of the hut (out of which slender roots draped down like curtains), Eliphaz saw the shadowed outlines of stone statues, little teraphim with twisted limbs and blank, misshapen faces.

Raising the emblem of his golden ring, Besset spoke, his voice commanding and determined, hiding his fear behind the specter of authority: “By the power vested in me by the Pharaoh’s mark, I demand answers regarding the—”

A harsh cackle interrupted him. The woman had erupted in laughter, piercing squeals that filled the quiet as her body shook. Gradually the fit subsided; by the end she was merely wheezing loudly, and for a moment Eliphaz feared the woman would collapse from lack of breath.

She did not, and as silence returned she stared at Besset with her one good eye, the wrinkles of her face angular and creased with contempt.

“You really know nothing, do you?” In contrast to her outburst, the woman’s voice was low and ragged, punctuated by the shallowness of her breath.

“You come in here and speak of your kings,” she continued. “Old, weak kings, who breed like animals, desperate to preserve that faint trace of the divine in their blood. Barely more than a drop!” She laughed again, a whistling emerging from the back of her throat.

Eliphaz tried to decipher Besset’s inscrutable expression. There was anger, of course, at the woman’s heretical disdain. But there was something else that held the anger in check: a fear that stemmed from the women’s shamelessness, which compelled Besset to question whatever beliefs he thought he held. The commander remained frozen, unable to respond.

“May the gods have mercy,” the woman muttered. In her lap she held a mortar, half-full of some dark, sticky substance which she worked with a stone. She turned her attention back to the concoction and said nothing else.

Eliphaz glanced towards Narina, looking for guidance, but the girl ignored him. She seemed entranced by the woman, studying her every move as she worked. Eliphaz still hadn’t shaken the feeling that he existed outside his body, as if he was watching himself fall into some deadly trap. The hut felt claustrophobic, crowded with shadows and unknowable things that clouded his thoughts and made it impossible to think straight.

He took a deep breath. The woman was weak, harmless. The least she could do was answer their questions.

“Where did the bells come from?”

The woman looked up and stared at him. Eliphaz tried to ignore the dead, glazed blue eye, but it shone in the darkness and he found himself drawn to it, again and again.

The woman scoffed out of disinterest. “The bells? An old trick to ensure the gods are heard.”

“Not all the gods,” Eliphaz said, thinking of the inscription they had found. “One god in particular: Hadad.”

The woman nodded and seemed slightly satisfied. “That’s right. They are wards of the wind spirit, who watches over this place.”

“Wards? So we’re safe here, from any danger?”

“Of course not,” the woman cackled. “Hadad would never manifest; it is too dangerous, and what does he have to gain? We are nothing to him. Yet he shows us his mercy, and lets his wind rattle the bells when danger approaches. So for now, we are safe.”

Eliphaz took a deep breath, trying to ease his buzzing nerves. “Do you know why we have come?”

“The question is too obvious,” she retorted. “Us seers, holy men and witches, we are often commended for our gift of reading fate, of seeing future and past on an old wanderer’s face. If only they knew how easy it was: men wear their purpose so clearly, no wonder that to the gods we are like earthworms digging towards the sun.” The woman looked up, leaning over the fire to examine Eliphaz’s face. “You have traveled a great distance to cross this cursed forest, bearing weapons and blessed gifts, and you ask me if I know why you’ve come? The question is too obvious: you have come to slay the nephilim.”

The word struck Eliphaz deeply, unfamiliar but resonant with meaning. The image of his grandfather came to mind, the frail, blind man who bore the burden of ancient knowledge. “What did you call it?” he asked.

The old woman did not respond at once, taking a moment to regard him with a knowing smile, showing her thin, yellow teeth. “You already know stories of the flood, do you not? Your face reveals you as a descendant of the moon wanderers, those old men who first gave name to the Creator.”

“Of course I know of the deluge, when God cleansed the world of Man’s wickedness. For Elohim’s wrath is as great as his forgiveness.”

“Yes, it was the Creator, whom you call the God of gods, who summoned the waters. But in punishment of what, exactly? You speak of wickedness, but of what kind?”

For a second he hesitated. “I…do not know. That knowledge is lost to time, as Elohim surely intended.”

“Surely He did, but just because that was His intention does not make it true, for the Creator is more fallible than you have been told.”

“It is said He is all-knowing, all-powerful,” Eliphaz insisted.

“His great power is no exaggeration,” she acknowledged. “But the distance between this world and the divine is also great, and so the truth slips through, carried by the whispers of the spirits, or buried deep beneath the earth, refusing to wither away.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The woman dipped a branch into her mortar, coating its tip before plunging it into the fire. The incense ignited, dispersing a thick smoke into the air. To Eliphaz, it wasn’t so much a smell than an intense, searing pain that tore past his nostrils and into his brain. His eyes watered, but as he blinked away the tears, his vision changed. The fire was covered by a strange aura that seemed to glint with rainbow-hued light. The darkness too, was refined, each cast shadow separate from the rest, as if their individual forms had been outlined by threads of silver. The world itself seemed to slowly move; Eliphaz thought he could feel it, soft breathing that pushed against the walls of the den.

“Let me tell you what I know of your Elohim,” the woman said. Her shadow now loomed behind her, encased by white light that seeped out at its edges. Eliphaz sensed power in the shadow, an overwhelming pressure that compelled him and his companions to silence as the woman spoke.

“For the gods, time does not simply move in one direction,” she explained. “They reside in a place beyond our comprehension, outside of time and space as we can see it. Put simply, they see everything at once: the past, the present, and all the possible futures. Thus Elohim saw the coming wickedness of men, an inevitable future that loomed in the horizon. Nevertheless, the Creator sought a way to stop this.”

“Do not mistake a god’s power for omnipotence,” she said, her single eye leering with disdain. “They do not think like us. Their power is unimaginable, and so they attempt the impossible. That does not mean they cannot fail.

“For Elohim, He could not descend himself. The distance was too wide, the journey between the divine and the material too fraught with danger. Instead, He fashioned servants out of Himself, divine beings of light that emerged from the multitude of His form. These were the Watchers, and their purpose was to descend to the earth, and to reverse the wickedness which had befallen men.

“The Watchers visited the human settlements, appearing as light made solid to mortal eyes. They carried with them Elohim’s message and their intent was pure. It wasn’t enough.

“Our world is not meant for the divine, it is as foreign to them as their world is to us. They have no sense of sin, and their souls are weak to its corruption. So it was that the Watchers tasted sin, and abandoned their purpose. They chose to live among men, trading divine knowledge for wealth and power. Their commingling may have gone unnoticed, were it not for one crucial mistake.

“For the Watchers were never satisfied. Not with the great palaces and temples built in their honor, nor with the feasts where hundreds of beasts were slaughtered. The more they amassed, the more they wanted. They looked upon mortal women, and took them as their own, keeping them within their chambers. They bore children, formidable half-mortals that towered over their counterparts. These beings, the children of the Watchers, were called the nephilim.

“They were great warriors, hailed as heroes by some, denounced as tyrants by others. I suppose it depended on which side you were on. Whether you fought alongside them or faced their blades on the fields of war.” She smiled bitterly, the crooked contour of her mouth exaggerated by firelight.

Smoke wafted upward, out of the underworld of the hut through a rift in the ceiling, exposing open air. The sky was dark and still, stars hidden by clouds.

“Despite their formidable appearance, the nephilim proved cursed from birth. The blood within their veins coursed with the divine, it tore at their bodies which were not made of light, but only matter and flesh. The pain drove them mad, their minds grew sick and crazed. The nephilim developed a taste for mortal blood, the only thing that could quell their affliction.

“The nephilim ushered in an age of violence. Cities were slaughtered, wars fought between the Watchers and their progeny, with mankind caught in between. The madness proved too great, the effects irreversible, and so Elohim brought forth the deluge, cleansing the world once and for all.” She laughed quietly to herself. “All that death, that near-total destruction, and for what purpose? Because one god thought he could stop the inevitable, twist the very nature of the world.”

As the woman spoke, the effects of the incense had grown stronger. Eliphaz felt his senses sharpen, every aura, every thread of light somehow perceptible to his mind. Each motion or flicker of shadow seemed utterly predictable, like time itself had turned material, a river that flowed into the future. Every word the woman had said sounded inevitable, a truth that could not be told another way. Yet questions remained.

“You speak as if Elohim did not himself create the world,” Eliphaz said. “If he is truly the Creator, how could he be as fallible as you say?”

After finishing her story, the woman had closed her working eye. Only the blue orb remained, staring coldly into nothingness. “To create is a different matter. The gods can nudge fate, bring about great change through the smallest of actions. But to actively meddle in the affairs of our world—that only begets disaster and unforeseen consequences.”

“If Elohim summoned the flood to kill the nephilim, why are you so sure that it is what we seek?” he asked. “How could one possibly still be alive, after all this time?”

The woman shrugged as she replied. “That I cannot say. All that the whispers have told me is that a Nephilim has returned. By what means, or by whom, I do not know. Yet it has awoken—the fact is undeniable.”

Eliphaz felt something stir in the wild beyond the hut. It felt far-off, a distant echo of unsettled shadows. A tree felled within the forest perhaps, stirring the underbrush?

A sharp intake of breath came from his side. It was Narina, her face was drained of color. Her eyes were no longer transfixed toward some invisible point, but turned to Eliphaz in quiet panic.

“It’s here,” she whispered, “somewhere outside.”

Eliphaz felt his heart freeze, a chill passing through his blood. In the silver shadows Narina’s expression terrified him. He had never seen such fear, not in Jakob’s eyes, nor in the Moabite he had left in the desert. That had simply been a fear of death—this was different. In Narina’s eyes, Eliphaz could see some horrible truth emerge, a memory so deeply receded and hidden it must have been like Narina was experiencing it for the first time. She had found what they had been searching for, and in its recognition Narina had destroyed whatever protection she had against the horror she had tried so hard to escape. Eliphaz could see it, her pain etched clearly in the lines of her face as she struggled to maintain composure.

What were they thinking, coming to this place, seeking to unmake this ungodly creature? What hope did they have against the Nephilim, this ancient evil which had awoken simply so that it could once again feed off blood and terror?

“Fate has come knocking,” the woman croaked, breaking through their locked eyes. “The spirits are watching closely, observing the turns of destiny. Go out and meet it; follow the sound of the bells. Tell me, can you hear it?”

Eliphaz could hear it. Somewhere behind him, a sound emerged from the darkness. It wasn’t the soft chimes he’d heard before. No, even from this distance the bells rattled with an undeniable intensity, rapid vibrations that echoed through the trees. It was more akin to the screech of an animal, the blood-curdling cry of some half-wounded thing on the throes of death. Yet it went on and on, without breath or pause.

It was the warning of Hadad, the god of wind and storm. The Nephilim had come.