Prologue (Remastered)
In the beginning…
God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Or so the story of Creation goes…
Same, too, to say, that this was also the story of Michael’s first triumph against Samael’s Great Rebellion.
They say that the Bible is the Word of God, His story, and His message to humanity, however, many theologians never fully understand all the words written by the great apostles, prophets and scribes of God.
The writer themselves were puzzled with every word that came from the inspiration of God through their writing.
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Faced with the punishment of being banned from the promised land of Canaan, the writer of the first five books, the Pentateuch, Moses, the great leader of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, determined to himself that he will scribe and record what the Lord inspires him to write.
He began with the words, “In the beginning…” notating the answer to the large mystery of ‘Where did everything started from?’
From Genesis to Exodus, how they escaped slavery from Egypt, and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, Moses played a large role in recording history and the original manuscript of the Holy Book.
What was common on these books were that they present God’s power to the human realm - His influence, physically and spiritually, on the Earth’s fundamental laws and humanity.
The impossible made possible, the unthinkable made pursuable, and the improbable proven.
Little did we know about the spiritual creatures that help conjured these so-called miracles, or as the humanities call it, abnormalities.
The power to bend reality into your will outside of Earth’s fundamental laws was something that cannot be achieved by mere human.
The humans do have their wild imagination – concoctions to a colourful and advancing world, however, they can only so little to so much with their own bare hands and feet.
They were limited and cased into the laws of physics and the laws of the universe, whatever they can produce beyond those boundaries were theorized to be with the help of spiritual beings upon the will of God.
These spiritual beings took on faces similar to human, but were theorized to be genderless, their form changes according to their purpose and each of them has a different power that can bend even nature itself.
In reality, the appearance of each was uncommon to the human eyes, and mind, looking like sword, flames, ray of light, wheel with eyes, beast, and winged creatures.
They operated in the shadows, perhaps, secret agents, fashioned by God, effortlessly blending into the crowd to create opportunities for trials and temptations, and visited humanity time and time again in a particular way that sends shivers down your spine.
Spiritual beings – in the written manuscript of different Biblical scholars, they were called angels, and the fallen ones were reiterated as demons, but there were a band of angels that stood particularly unique as they lead their own choir or army of angels.
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The Pharaoh groomed his adoptive son, Moses, to be a great Egyptian scholar.
Years of his life focused on preparing him to be one of the great pillars of the dynasty of Egypt, along with his father and brother, the Pharaoh and prince regent.
In the middle of the great pyramids’ construction, many historians believed that the Pharaoh appointed Moses as the chief engineer and architect.
Building those ginormous symbol of wealth and power of the Egyptian monarchs and elites, Moses became one of the greatest assets in his era.
He was always at the top of his game.
His teachers strictly taught him manners of the royalty, work ethics, and their religious gods, but nothing from his prestige education and training has prepared him for what fate has arranged for him.
“Stop! Please!” A little girl, an Israelite slave, pleaded and kneeled in front of the Egyptian soldier as her salty sweat runs down her brows.
The slaves have been tirelessly put to work for almost seven days now by one of the nobles who felt ill and commanded that his grave would be constructed and completed immediately.
Egyptian soldiers were assigned to monitor each and every slave to work and accomplish the great task of mounting one of the greatest pyramids of all time.
As women and the children were given task to distribute food and water, the men, the older ones, and the young ones, were allocated to the heavy duty of creating blocks of mud and bringing them to the construction.
SFX: WAPOOSH! A heavy hand from a soldier whipped down and hard at an old man – refusing to back down and denying rest to the elder, the slashes echoed across the valleys.
The Egyptian soldier just wouldn’t stop.
The granddaughter looked away from every whip and flinch her eyes as the sight of her grandfather, being whipped to death for falling behind the line, as blood oozes out of the pores of his back, blending in the mud and straw where the slave drenched as he fell behind the line.
Rashes start to appear as the straw’s unbearable dryness produced the itching reddish appearance as it touched the old man’s skin.
In addition to this, the insane heat torched the old man’s eyes he could barely see where he was going.
Moses’ heart ached as he heard the old man’s cries and the little girl’s pleas.
He always felt frustrated seeing the violence and the hatred grew stronger every day between the soldiers and the slaves, but he couldn’t just abandon a thousand year tradition for an emotion.
When he was a little boy, he only ever was on the side line and would look away in vexation whenever he sees something similar, but not this time. He could not look away.
He did not fully understand why, but his body followed his heart and mind, because of this, most of the high judges in the court did not like Moses.
To the powerful men of Egypt, he looked weak, sympathizing with the slaves.
Though the current Pharaoh keeps him in his heart as his son and the current regent treats him like a blood-brother, a noticeable difference in character can be visually seen.
“Father, I’d like a slave to be in my quarters.” The first time he heard this from his brother, the prince regent, it immediately broke his heart.
He realized he was still too weak to do anything, but now, now, that he’s the chief engineer and architect, maybe, maybe, he thought, “Maybe I can do something about this!”
He quickly rushed to the aid of the old man with a collapsed lung, the soldier continued to whip the man to death until he submitted, wobbling as he stood up and tried to barely carry his load.
Of course, he wouldn’t be able to stand up - you’re whipping him to death!
He thought this through…
But it was too late, he tightly grabbed the soldier’s wrist to stop, but the old man collapsed again and the minute he knelt and felt for the pulse of the man, it was too late.
He was no longer breathing, his unmoving body lay still half-buried in the sand and mud and the straw that he tried to pick up.
I thought I can save him. The desperation on his looks and the sadness in his eyes became apparent and transparent as he stood up and glanced towards the little girl.
He expected a wave of rejoicing of gratitude from the slaves, instead, a wild, deafening screech from the weeping of the granddaughter of the old man echoed through the desert.
He could not comfort the girl, he could not scold the soldier, he could not punish the abuser, and protect the weak, stuck in the middle, he was faced with the greatest enemy of his life – the cruelty of his own father, or so he thought.
That night, determined to get justice, and to be the defender of the weak, the sneaky vigilante snuck into the darkness and struck quickly in the moonlight.
He hid his face pretty well for a prince as no one realized this as he funnelled through the slave camp to the soldier’s tents.
“No, no, please, don’t kill me.” The Egyptian soldier recognized the face of the prince.
He remembered Moses’ raging eyes as he struck down the slave earlier that day, he could not forget those burning, fiery eyes.
It was a sin to fight back against royalty, or even kill one.
The soldier did not dare to fight Moses, from the rock he picked up from outside of the tents, he banged it against the soldier’s head.
The architect’s hands became bloodied the first strike, second strike, but the soldier was still alive.
This infuriated him more, and more. The soldier tried to defend himself by putting out his hands and trying to stop Moses.
He begged him for his life. He doesn’t want to get killed by fighting Moses, he doesn’t want to kill the prince in self-defense, but he doesn’t want to get killed by Moses as well.
But the more he beseeched for mercy, the more Moses got agitated, he remembered how the little girl implored for his grandfather’s life, and for that, he struck the blows even harder and harder, until there’s no recognizable feature in the man’s face.
A sigh of relief rushed down his spine as he finished the task, he succeeded in sending that soldier’s soul to hell’s hottest and finest rooms.
He’s no longer breathing. Or so he thought.
The relief quickly brushed down his face, and terror and panic soon came charging in. The clouds that covered the moonlight passed on and as the light hit the sand, his murdered handiwork reflected in his eyes.
His hands covered in blackish hard liquid, as the blood dried out immediately in the cold of the night.
What… what… what have I done?
Alas, he thought he was doing a righteous task by taking justice in his own hands, but what it took was his own innocence, and send it off to hell.
Sand! I’ll… I’ll bury him in the sand!
He quickly scooped his bloodied hands in the sand, cold and rough, gasping for air as he dashed to bury the body in the middle of nowhere.
He knew that no secret in this world that will never be revealed, but hoped at the least that his family doesn’t find out.
As he was finishing his burial, his eyes nervously darted and scoped around like a cornered impala, waiting for the lion to strike.
There’s no one. Good.
He speedily head back to the palace, near at the river’s bank, and washed off his body and threw his clothes, the river stowed away with the bloodied evidence of his crime.
He looked at the silver moon, and it was not a good sight.
His eyes filled with the red-stained blood that splashed around while he bludgeoned the soldier to death with a sharp rock.
He wanted to go back in time, to undo what he did, but it’s too late, it’s already done.
Forgiveness from a god was familiar to Moses, they have customs and rituals indicated in their history paintings and drawings, but this was the first time he sought forgiveness from the God of the Israelites.
God of Israel, if you can hear me, please… please forgive me. I’ve been good, and I tried to help many of your people. I hope You can help me this time. His hands grew heavier as he tried to imitate the Israelites praying to their God.
Every one of the Egyptians was well acquainted with each other, though they treated the Israelites as slaves, their definition of family was still pretty close, hence, the next morning, the family of the soldier petitioned a searching party from the palace.
Alarmed by the missing soldier report, the Pharaoh quickly dispatched a team to rummage through the desert and the nearest kilometres of the borders.
And within that day, the army discovered a body, unrecognizable, near the borders of Egypt.
So… so fast, I… I need to get out of here. The prince was one of the onlookers when the army discovered the body.
God wanted to help Moses, though he murdered a man in the name of revenge, he was still the chosen deliverer of the Israelites out of Egypt, that was His plan.
Then…
God liberated Moses all from the anchor of his family, the pressure of Egypt and from his crime.
“Aren’t you the one who killed this man? Are you not an Egyptian as well? Why did you kill him?”
Someone whispered in the crowd.
Moses darted his eyes through the crowd, there was no one.
Who’s talking, then… who?
An old man has his back turned from Moses, and that’s when his heart spoke to him, Approach the old man, approach him.
And he did.
That voice steered him to something that he could not fathom, at the least for that moment, or for the next forty years.
He frantically stretched out his arms across the crowd and reached the old man’s shoulder.
“Wait…”
His face quickly turned pale and devoid of any colour, as if the blood came rushing out, the old man’s face, it was the dead old man, the unmoving old man, whipped to death, bloodied with his back, and rashes in his whole body.
“You killed him! You killed your fellow Egyptian! He killed him! I saw him last night!” The outlandish accusations of the old man seemed to be believable to the people around Moses.
The Chief of the Army quickly posed a wanted poster and notice for the head of Moses, the man who killed an Egyptian.
How is this possible? That old man already died, I avenged him. The girl buried her grandfather, I saw it, how?
His thoughts got scrambled quickly as puzzle as he packed up his things to escape justice for his murder charges.
Pressed by the elites and nobles, and pressured by the high judges in the court, Pharaoh, issued a warrant to arrest and punish Moses for the murder charges.
I have no other choice but to go.
“MOSES! MOSES!” The echoing soldiers and army ready to arrest him were now threading to the gates of Egypt.
He quickly marched on to the death of the desert to escape his pursuers.
*Huff, Huff*
This isn’t working, this isn’t what I wanted. I only wanted freedom for the slaves. Fair treatment for everyone, how did it end up this way?
It’s too late. he was already miles away from the kingdom, in the vast desert. At least he knew how to find an oasis or something similar in this time of the day.
Exhausted, lingering between life and death, Moses continued to march on at the cold of the night, his eyes barren of any life and hope, not knowing where to go, what to do, and if there is any future ahead of all of this.
Then…
SFX: Thud, thud
Soon, his knee gave out, weakness due to thirst spread throughout his body and he suddenly fell on his knees, then his face on the sand.
It’s as if he had lost all hope, closing his eyes to oblivion, his ears started tingling, there’s sound coming from somewhere.
“Father, father…”
The faintest sound of a lady woke him right up, his eyes dilated of joy and hope. He pulled out his arms from the sand, and pushed his body upwards, along with his torso and his legs.
Flailing like his legs were going to give out, he struggled to find the sound.
Where… where is it?
“Aaa-, aa-, hee-“ He struggled calling out, he wanted someone to find him, to pull him out of his misery, that moment right there.
He doesn’t have that much voice in him, the sand dried up his throat, there’s vibration from his breathing, but sound, there’s nothing much, he’s too weak to speak, or even shout for help.
“Father…”
The whispers were getting louder by a minute, in what direction were they coming from?
Moses closed his eyes, felt the wind and located where the whispers were coming from.
South-east! South-east, go, go, go, move legs!
And there it was, a small group of people, in tents surrounding a small oasis, supply of water, in the middle of the desert.
Moses’ eyes lights up even more, shone, and the only thing he could see was the well besides the oasis.
He ran and threw his face down at the water of the oasis, drinking, gulping, and-
“Haaaaaaaaaaa.” Gasping for air.
He lifted up his drenched face from the well, and looked up to the Heavens, the stars, the skies, the moon, it wasn’t bloody red anymore.
He clearly saw the shining light reflecting to the water and on to his eyes.
This time, his eyes contained a little bit of hope, glimmering, untainted, and wanted to start all over again.
He wanted to cry his eyes out, but that’s not possible, he was still dehydrated from walking in the scorching hot desert for almost a day.
Regaining his composure, his eyes wandered the premises, there’s no one nearby, no one awake, no soul that could whisper what he heard and yet he knows what he heard, he remembers what he heard.
However…
There’s something weird about the place. Everything was quiet, no one was definitely awake, particularly different from the bustling evening of Egypt.
Something even weirder caught his eye. A sword plunged shallowly on the sand near the well caught his curiosity, he began approaching the sword. It’s a double-edged sword.
There’s no sheath, no army, and no soldier nearby, even if there was, the sword would not have been left alone stuck in the sand.
He was not familiar with this type of sword as Egyptians used a sickle-shaped, one – edged sword in their military weaponry.
He’d only seen double-edged swords in their library of pictures, the walls that described their history and glory.
In all the war pictures in those walls, he never saw a double-edged sword depicted in the drawings.
Enthralled by the sword, he tightly grabbed the hilt of the shining silver sword and quietly pulled it out of the cold sand.
“Moses.” The sword brightly shone and pulsated.
“Ha!” Upon hearing a voice, he was startled and jerked off the sword out of his hands into the sand beneath his shoeless toes.
What was that? Was that the sword? He gasped for air, hyperventilating already as he thought he was hallucinating.
“Was… was that you?”
What am I doing, talking to a sword? Is this a full-on hallucination? He would not say it out loud, but a talking sword was too far-fetched for the man who believed in the laws of physics.
“Yes.”
It talked! It talked, it talked, it talked! What?
“What… what are you? Were you… were you the one who lead me here?” Definitely intrigued, he slowly approached the talking sword.
He scanned through the desert, through the tents, and through the oasis, no other soul awake.
“I am the messenger of God - the God of Jacob, the God of Joseph, the God of the Israelites.” The sword announced its identity.
You? A sword? Wait, Israelites? He thought to himself.
“So, it’s true, the God of Israel, is the true God?” He slowly approached the shining metal.
There are many Egyptians gods that we pray to, but… I never felt a connection. All the insane rituals wasted to the gods of this world.
Moses tried to grab again the hilt of the sword. This time, he made sure he tightly gripped the hilt.
“Yes.” Whenever Moses grabbed the sword, it shone even brighter.
His heart skipped a beat, but he didn’t let go of the sword. Hard as it may seem but his mind accepted the fact that the talking sword is what led him there.
“What do you want?” He twisted his hands and gazed at the beauty of the sword front and back side.
“Simple. To give you the message of God.” Puzzled by the words of the messenger, Moses stuttered in fear.
“Me- Message?”
“You are of Israel, son of Jochebed, daughter of Levi, brother of Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob.” The declaration of the mysterious being made no sense at all. It was impossible, but… somehow, he was not able to fully deny it.
“What? That’s… that’s… im- impossible.” He continued to stutter.
He gathered his thoughts, he’s an Egyptian, yet he has feelings for the slaves, pity, love, mercy, and the slaves are good to him as well, they knew something that he doesn’t.
Flashbacks came flooding in.
The time he felt pity for the first time for the slaves outside of the palace working on with the pyramids, and that time that he saw a little girl guiding him in the river, or that time that he remember in his dreams that an adult woman slave was singing him to sleep, those… those weren’t just dreams, they’re… they’re memories.
Wait, they’re… my memories?
“Your mother kept you alive in a basket for almost three years.” The sword described the sacrifices of Jochebed when she was nursing Moses when he was just a new born baby.
“Pharaoh, your adoptive grandfather has decided to slay the male Israelites to avoid increasing the number of the slaves.” The revelations began to unravel to Moses, who was trying to understand everything.
“He was afraid that a rebellion will happen if Israel were to outgrow Egypt and overcome them in numbers.” He retold the story of the bloody river of Nile.
“Numbers… wait, what? He… Grand- Grandfather?” The man appeared confused the moment the sword mentioned the Pharaoh’s crime of murder.
“The history is not one pleasant thing to remember. The children howled and whimpered, and their mothers wailed and bellowed their cries, it’s as if the Heavens closed again its windows, this time, against humanity.” The sword’s tone of voice changed dramatically when he began retelling about the children being killed in the river of Nile.
“S-S- So…”
The reason why many Israelites hated my grandfather was… was… He deduced it pretty quickly.
“The soldiers, along with their conscience, begrudgingly tossed the male infants to the Nile, only to be drowned, or subdued or eaten by the reptiles which roam about the river.” The voice coming from the sword shook in disappointment and anger as it uttered what happened years ago.
“That day, the Earth, the land, the waters grieved for the gifts of God shed blood unnaturally through the wickedness of the heart of Pharaoh.” Imagining and going back to the time where the souls of the babies reunited with the Creator after their untimely deaths.
“Then when… I… I was about to be killed…” Moses’ voice shook in horror as he recalled his missing memories.
“Yes, however, your mother was able to get you hidden from the soldiers. Once she was fully aware that she will not be able to for the next years of your infancy, she… she prepared a basket for you to be able to float into the Nile. Guided by your sister, Miriam, and Jochebed, watching over you, the basket sailed within the most dangerous depths of the river to the chamber of Pharaoh’s daughter.” The voice continued to divulge and reveal his past.
“The Pharaoh and his daughter believed that you were a blessing from their gods and declared that you will become a prince of Egypt, next to his heir.”
His eyes opened wide, his knee gave out again, but not due to hunger, not due to dehydration, but due to shock, he also lost the power to hold the sword and it fell, blade-first into the ground.
“That’s… how do you know so much about me?” His hands shook, his heart palpitated, as he tried to make sense of everything.
“I already told you, I am the messenger of God – the ONE, TRUE GOD.” The sword glimmered as it spoke firmly.
“If you have saved me, th- the- then…” Moses tried to catch his breath.
“Yes, you will be Israel’s deliverer, you will deliver them out of slavery into the promise land.” He caught on real quick, even in utter panic and chaos in his mind, he’s far too intelligent to be fooled by anyone.
“I… no, no, no… I just came out of there as a murderer! I’m a criminal, not some saviour, and who am I to… to…” But at the back of his mind, he knew he wasn’t qualified. He just killed a man, a murderer, a criminal, someone who was an enemy to both Egypt and Israel.
“You’re not just someone. God set you up to be the Prince of Egypt and the Deliverer of Israel. You are Moses, taken out, drawn forth, chosen to be the one to lead your people out of slavery.” The voice encouraged him – Moses knew the meaning of his name, but did not fully embraced it as it was given to him by his wet nurse – Jochebed.
“Ho – ho - how can I…” He was still doubting himself.
“Believe. For now, learn the way of the priest and the shepherd. I will be reaching you again when the time comes.” The voice tried to reassure him one last time.
“When the time comes?”
“Yes. “
Moses, looking down, has realized his fate, and his life was a set-up to believe what’s in front of him, but now…
There’s an even bigger person than father, than the Pharaoh.
“Who… who are you?”
“Me? I am the messenger of God.”
“No, no, I mean, what is your name? What are you?”
As soon as Moses became curious about the sword, what emerged from the back of the sword raised his interest even more.
White, fluffy, and shining bird-like wings fluttered in front of his eyes, with a jaw-dropping beauty and elegant movement, the only thing that Moses can do is try to reach out the illuminating wings.
He let go of the hilt of the sword and thus, it beautifully hovered in the air.
“I am-“
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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, are purely coincidental.