The Descent of the Gods

Altar

His chest felt as it would split open every time he sucked air in for breath. The fight had only been a few minutes long, but Enoch had never had to react so fast, sprint so desperately, jump so high, or duck so low - so many times and in such rapid succession - in his entire life.

Naamah clutched the edge of her seat. She had never seen a battle like this before. It surpassed anything she could have dreamed of. It seemed impossible that a man could have survived in the arena with a dragon as long as he had. The crowd had stopped jeering. One by one, people had started cheering for Enoch as he narrowly escaped death time after time.  

The dragon had not expected pricks from Enoch's staff and bloody bruises from the stones flung from his sling. It grew more and more furious and frustrated as Enoch dodged attack after attack. As it grew more angry, it grew more clumsy. It reacted without thinking, and its attacks were settling into a predictable rhythm.  

The watching angels had expected a swift and clean kill. Their point made. Their problem solved. Now they grew conscious of a new problem - once Enoch fell under the dragon's teeth and was ripped to shreds, the story of his battle would not soon fade from Nod's memory. The convict's execution would soon cross over into martyrdom. Semyaza fumed. Azrael cursed himself - another mistake to further complicate their situation.

But as lucky or skilled as Enoch was, he was still facing a much stronger and deadly creature. Unless something drastic happened soon to prevent it, only one fate awaited him in the arena. 

Claws raked his side. He had been dodging the beast's tail and had fallen almost directly into the talons as the dragon whipped out a forelimb at him. He spun as they gouged three strips of flesh right off his ribs. His sling was torn from his grasp and snapped.

The crowd shouted. He could hear their disappointment. They had witnessed a battle they would never forget, and it was drawing to a close much too soon for them.  

Only his staff was left to him. But the blinding pain in his side he knew would be his downfall. His body would instinctively try to move in a way to reduce the pain - slowing him down. He was now an easy target.

The dragon, knowing the first death stroke had been dealt, roared at the crowd, as if defying them to take Enoch's side in the fight. 

Enoch knew it probably was his last chance. He drove back the pain and leaped forward, running in the dragon's blind spot as it howled its rage at the spectators. Blood poured down his tunic and dripped into the sand as his feet pounded the earth. 

He sprinted directly for what was still standing of the altar, summoning all his strength and speed for an attack of his own. Vaulting upward onto the stones, his jumped - staff aimed for the back of the dragon's skull. 

All his momentum behind the spear, his last hope was that the spearhead would land in the crevice between two hard scales and penetrate the dragon's brain cavity.  He shot through the air, staff poised to make the blow.

The dragon ducked at the last second. Enoch didn't have time to wonder how it had known to do so. But it had.

His chance was gone, but he wasn't dead yet. He hit the sand rolling in front of the beast's shoulder. He lunged backwards, blinded by the swirling dust, stabbing instinctively.

The spear entered dragon flesh and went deep. Enoch pushed.

The dragon howled its agony and shuddered and writhed against the violating weapon. The spear snapped in half, and the tail whipped around, flinging Enoch across the arena like a toy. His body smashed into the side of the altar and he collapsed into the dust. Head swirling, he was unsure how conscious he really was. He couldn't feel most of his body.

And like that, the battle was over.

"Enough Azrael!" Naamah begged him, tears streaming down her face. "For me! If you care for me. Make it stop!"

Azrael only stared - he couldn't get Sariel's flaming corpse out of his mind. These humans would suffer for what they had done. 

Naamah's words fell on deaf ears.

Suddenly Enoch opened his eyes. He had passed out? The sky was made of bloody sand? No, the world was just upside down. Enoch had never heard such a clamor before. Either his head was exploding or the universe was collapsing upon itself. He gasped for air under the pressure.

The dragon had jerked him up in the air. His massive jaws were wrapped around Enoch's legs. 

Enoch could hear his bones snapping. But he didn't feel it. The feeling to his lower body had already been severed.

The dragon dropped him, and he fell onto what was left of Cain's old altar, his body more broken than his father's. His blood streamed into the stones from a dozen wounds.

At last, a sacrifice lay on Cain's altar - not a defiant statue, not a descending angel - a man who had only tried to do what was right for the sake of people who considered him an enemy.

As he accepted his fate, Caleb's word came back to him -  "Show them how the righteous face death!"  Enoch managed a smile. Suddenly everything was clear.   

"If a sacrifice is what I can be," He thought. "Then accept my life, and have mercy on them. They have been deceived again by false gods. Drive back their darkness with your light!"

His surroundings grew fuzzy. Images danced in the dust of the arena. He saw his father's twisted body, he could see Seth's altar, the angel's descending, the mountain being formed into a monument to their coming... 

Faintly, oh so very faintly, through the pounding din of brain cells dying by the billions, Enoch heard echos of a horn. And somehow he knew the melody - it was Adam's call, the sound of Eden.

As the veil of death fell, the horn became a thousand trumpets blasting their call through the heavens.