AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Duly noted, Mother. Thank you," Seth said, and I took Azazel's hand.
"Well, what's your plan from here?" She looked from one son to another.
"That depends," Seth's voice held a hard edge to it, "on what you can tell us what the next step in this journey will be, or would have been, had there only been one of us left."
"Of course." She sighed. "I'm not sure how much help it will be, but if you are ready, I will tell you the story."
I held my breath. This was the part we didn't know. Azazel and I had never reached this part of the journey.
"Mind you, most of that story I only know from Behlial. This was long before my time. Thousands, tens of thousands, of years ago."
I shuddered at the idea of how long Behlial had terrorized Earth and we had had no idea.Well, most didn't have an idea, I allowed.
"The vampires, as you call them, or Daemons as they call themselves," Ishtar nodded at Lilith before she began her story, "have always lived on a planet called Elysian. Their greatest achievement was reaching immortality. How, or when or why, was lost over the generations, but when they did, they lost the capability of reproduction, which wasn't a great loss to them since they were plentiful, and with immortality, it would have arisen way too many problems for them."
"Now, the Nayphyllym have always been a warmongering, heartless bunch." For some reason, her words reminded me of my parents and the way the Order had demanded the untainted Nayphyllym to be raised and also how callous and cold I could sometimes be. "Please remember that whatever I tell you here comes from Behlial. I don't know anything about the Nayphyllym firsthand, and by the same token, whatever you know is probably thousands of years old."
"For whatever reason, the Nayphyllym left their home planet, Tartarus. We don't know if it was all of them or just a group. Anyway, they came upon Elysian. And when they found out that the Daemons were immortal, they desired nothing more than to learn their secret. A deal was struck. The Daemons invited the Nayphyllym to live with them in exchange for their technology."
"Over the years, they discovered many things, but the most important one was that a Daemon could please a Nayphyllym in ways previously unknown to them." She stopped and smiled at us. "Yes, sex. It all boils down to sex, doesn't it?"
"Like I said, Nayphyllyms were cold, unfeeling, and frigid. At least until they began to mate with the Daemons, which resulted in the first pregnancies. Over the next generations they learned that these children, Tainted as they called them, were given immortality as well, creating a kind of symbiosis between the two species. But after a few generations, the Tainted lost the ability to reproduce."
"For centuries, everything went well. Daemons and Nayphyllym cohabited on Elysian, enjoying the modified offspring and, in time, the Daemons became quite adept at creating their own technologies based on what they learned."
"Alas. Like all good things, it didn't last forever. For one reason or another, a split occurred between the Daemons, Nayphyllym, and the Tainted.
"The old, original Daemons especially became resentful of the Nayphyllym, probably because their technology had advanced enough so that they didn't feel like they needed the Nayphyllym any longer, or maybe because with the added Nayphyllym and the resulting Tainted, the planet was quickly filling up."
"They began to outsource and build other colonies. But Daemons are a funny breed. They lived on Elysian for so long that they had a hard time adapting to any new environment.
"First they began to push the Tainted out, reasoning that they were too young to have formed much of an attachment to Elysian and would be better suited to acclimatize to a new planet.
"They were wrong though. If anything, the Tainted seemed even more attached and revolted against the elders. The Nayphyllym, seeing their chance to take over Elysian and subjugate the Daemons, joined forces with the Tainted. The result was a bloody, all-out war, which neither side could win, especially with the technological advances the Daemons had made.
"Many alliances were forged and broken between the three factions over the years. As the war continued for well over two centuries, both sides suffered great losses, which was the hardest for the Daemons since they couldn't reproduce without the Nayphyllym. Still, the Daemons seemed to win, and one day, the Nayphyllym took to their ships and left."
"There should have been great rejoicing among the Daemons for their victory, but they had too many losses for that. Not one life on the planet remained untouched by the death toll. Furthermore, with the Nayphyllym gone, they could not produce new offspring, as the Tainted became infertile once their blood became too diluted. They got their planet back but had barely enough people to keep their race going."
She sighed deeply. "That's where Behlial came into play. He was one of the last original Daemons. A mere farmer before the Nayphyllym came, he rose in ranks during the war and especially at the end when he led the last battle against the Nayphyllym, the one that drove them away for good."
"As a reward, he was made king. And they called himKing of the Darknessas a reminder that he rose out of the darkest times and won."
That intrigued me. I hadn't met Behlial, but from all of Azazel's stories, I had made him out to be the devil. Every time he had mentioned theKing of Darkness, I had imagined the devil, but now I realized that the stories of the devil must have arisen from Behlial visiting Earth. To the early humans, he must've seemed like a devil, so the titleKing of Darknessbecame a glum tale, rather than a heroic one, which he must have been to his people.
"How did Earth get involved in all this?" one of the maidens Azazel had referred to as a member of his harem, Phoebe, asked.
Ishtar smiled benevolently at her and stroked the girl's light red hair back. "Ah, sweet one. Utter misfortune. That's what it was."
"You see, Behlial decided to go in search of the Nayphyllym, thinking that he had them beat. He thought he could enslave them and use them to breed with the Daemons on Elysian."
"I don't know how, with all the planets in the universe, he managed to find them, but find them he did."
Her expression took on a faraway look. "He didn't find them on Tartarus though, but on a remote planet the Nayphyllym discovered called Adama, which, according to legend, looked very much like Tartarus. Almost a complete copy. Oceans, forests, animals in abundance, even the local intelligent species, Adamas, reminded them of themselves."
"When was that?" Lilith asked.
"About fifteen thousand years ago, your time."
