The Serpent approached Hawwah, for she was wiser than her 
husband, and spoke to her of the dangers to the east, and of the 
greatest gifts of the Tree of Knowledge that might be used against 
the Daevas. But she refused the gifts, for she could see the cost that 
would come of it. 


The Serpent spoke then to Qayin, warning him of the shadow in the 
east and revealing the secret knowledge to him, teaching him the 


most powerful magics and potent spells. He was to lead the march 
against the shadow in the east. 


This knowledge proved to be too great a burden for Qayin to bear: in 
truth, it would be too great a burden for many of the gods. Qayin’s 
mind frayed under the strain of his hidden knowledge, and he lost 
that which he had once possessed, the eyes of a child and an 
uncovered spirit. He became withdrawn, eating little and sleeping 
less, and was filled with despair at the torment he now knew. His 
brother Hevel, at the urging of their mother Hawwah, spoke to him 
on this. An argument broke out over innocent words, rising in 
intensity until, in a fit of rage, Qayin struck down his brother Hevel 
with a stone. 


Adam could not bear to see his second son killed. Qayin was 
banished from the valley, cursed, and left to wander in the desert. 


Hevel’s spirit returned to his body after five days, for in those days 
the perilous Ways between the lands of the living and the lands of 
the dead could still be walked by the heroes of men. But his return 
was not met with rejoicing; he remained distant from his family and 
friends, and was of dark demeanor. The entire People, seeing that 
their future chief banished and their champion now trapped by 
despair, and hearing rumors to the east of the Daevas growing ever 
stronger and reaching ever further west, cried out in pain. 


When the shadow of the Daevas could no longer be ignored, Hevel 
took up his sword, and went east. There he fought the Daevas for 
three and thirty years, until he was heard of no more. Set too made 
actions of his own, building mighty bulwarks and defenses around 
the valley out of Hahkama’s copper servants, and raising from the 
People an army to defend their home. 


Years passed, and news of a great army from the east emerged, a 
final army, sent out to conquer the entire west, and at its head was 
the Butcher, Ab-Leshal, fiercest of the Daevite generals, endowed 
with frightening strength and terrifying sorceries. Many of the People 
fled, scattering themselves to the wind and the mercy of the outside, 


Qayin, hearing of the doom that was to come to the People, returned 
to his home, and was met there by the Butcher. Here, Qayin saw 


with horror that Ab-Leshal was in truth his brother Hevel, who in 
vanity had sworn himself to the dark gods of the Daevas and drunk 
deep of their black magics. Qayin once more took up a stone to slay 
his brother, and for this Ab-Leshal tore off his arms, first the right, 
and then the left. 


Ab-Leshal then set upon the valley and the People with his legions 
and sorceries and war-beasts, and all the might of the Daevas was 
shown. The People were slaughtered, even the elder Adam and 
Hawwah. Hakhana, the Voice Who Spoke For God, was shattered, 
her body broken and looted. The Tree of Life stolen away, and the 
Tree of Knowledge set to flame. Nahash the Serpent fled, first to the 
space-tower at Babel, and later on to the Library, where he 
remained in penance for his part in these things. The garden in the 
desert was reduced to ash, and those who were not killed were 
placed in chains, led back to the slave pits of the Daevas. 


Set, forgotten by all, remained, protected by the last of his shattered 
defenses, and watched the ashes cool. He saw ahead the 
destruction of the world, and the victory of the Scarlet King, looming 
as if clouds on the horizon. And he was greatly afraid. 


Set prayed for hope, and he was answered. He was shown the path 
the future would take. There was to be a Flood, until such a time 
when the Scarlet King might truly be destroyed. A period of safety 
within Yesod, where magic was hidden, and the King was trapped in 
his hellish realms. The war would be fought in secret, until such 
secrecy was no longer needed. 


By the instructions set before him, Set gathered thirty-six men and 
women to him, and established of them an order, forever hidden. In 
absolute humility would they serve the world, passing their mantles 
from one generation to the next in secret, unknown even to 
themselves, until the end of all things. They would be the ones to set 
the world right. 


The Thirty-Six scattered to distant nations, and there they waited, as 
doom came to Daevon in the east. 


Ab-Leshal had returned in triumph, but it was not to last. That part of 
him which was Hevel, who had played in the shadow of the Trees, 


who had loved his brothers and protected the People, still lived in his 
blackened soul, and this drove him mad. He struck back against the 
Daevas whom had enslaved him, and with rage and fury cut down 
their idols, and slaughtered their priest-kings, and brought ruin to 
their city. The god Moloch, the Horned King Crowned in Shame, 
stood to face Hevel-Ab-Leshal, and he too was defeated, rendered a 
sickly shade of his own power. Elsewhere, the subjugated peoples 
of the world, who saw the end that was at hand, struck back at the 
Daevas, to sow the world with Daevite blood. 


Hevel, son of Adam, who had cast down the gods of Daevon, raised 
his voice in challenge to the Scarlet King. 


And the Scarlet King answered him. 


Hevel, son of Adam, took up his sword, and the floodgates of the 
sky opened up with a Flood that would wipe time itself clean. 


And in doing so, the All-Mighty called upon the world, for the first 
time since the Word was spoken. 


And the world was called upon to witness. 


This is the history of mankind, fourth and final child-race of Earth, 
from the Finding of the Two Trees to the Flood. 


Excerpt of an Autobiography 


For Becca and Ruth and Number Three. 


* 


| was twelve when the Troubles came. It’s as good an age as any to 
witness the total transformation of the world, | think. 


| look back and see a quiet girl with her nose in a book, orbiting at 
the fringes of the social circle and far too clever for her own good.! 
A girl who thought she knew a lot about the world (though she really 
didn’t), who thought sometimes that she was ugly and stupid and 
awful (though she most certainly wasn’t), who bristled at being 
treated like a child and yet craved that stability. Someone whose 
most pressing problems were pimples and feeling self-conscious 
about burn scars. 


Thirty-four years later | find myself defending my own childhood 
against people who claim that it never existed, believe that the world 
has always been this way, and think that there is nothing better than 
to burn what remains down to the ground. Two generations have 
been born and one grown to adulthood since | was sitting in that 
classroom, having experienced neither the world that came before 
the Troubles nor the turmoil that brought us here. My own children 
are among them, and by no fault of their own the world of my 
childhood is as alien to them as the surface of Mars.2 My daughters 
are seven and five now, and with a third child on the way | feel the 
gap widening between my world and theirs. It can’t be closed with 
another history lesson, and heaven knows | have written enough of 
those books. 


Anyway, the Troubles. Mine began some hours before the rest of 
the world - shortly after eleven o’clock in the morning, on Thursday 
April 23rd, 2026, in Mrs. Kieslowski’s sixth grade social studies 
class. | had finished the test early, and in the remaining twenty 
minutes before lunch | had decided to get myself a proper education 


by reading through David Macaulay’s Casile.3 


| was distracted by the sound of footsteps, | looked up from my book 
to see the assistant secretary at the door, speaking with my teacher. 
After a brief exchange, Mrs. Kieslowski came over to my desk and 
told me that my father was here to pick me up. | had no idea what 
the cause of this would be, and was unsure whether | should be glad 
to be out of class, or worried that someone had found out what | had 
said to Sunny Menackis.4. 


| went up to the office and found my father talking with the principal. 
Here | was informed that | was being taken out of school early 
because of a “family emergency.” 


This was a bold-faced lie on my father’s part, and | knew it. We 
didn’t have any family besides each other. | didn’t say anything 
though, and let him spin his story about a beloved, and now 
deceased, great aunt in total earnestness. Even knowing better, | 
could almost believe him — my father could lie with the straightest 
face. 


| put on my best act of being concerned and surprised. Not to say 
that | wasn’t concerned and surprised, but | was far more surprised 
by the fact that my father’s lie of choice was one that | could see 
through — he wasn't trying to deceive me. 


The story was enough for the principal.5 | was signed out, grabbed 
my backpack and books, and walked out to the parking lot with my 
father, still very curious and a little trepid about what all of this was 
about. 


We got in the car. Before putting the keys in the ignition, my father 
stroked his beard and sighed. In that moment he looked terribly old. 
Though | saw him every day, | felt as if | was noticing the lines 
around his eyes and the grey in his hair for the first time, and it 
scared me. 


| asked him what was going on. He sighed again and said “I don't 
know. | wish | did.” 


He started up the car and went on to explain that he had gotten a 


call from the Initiative. One of their mystics® had begun having 
visions, and the others were following suit. Mystic visions are 
notoriously difficult to parse, and normally would not be very 
newsworthy, but in this case there were multiple consistent visions 
that had spread throughout all of the Initiative’s mystics. My father 
compared it to the tide coming in and going out, simultaneously.” He 
didn’t know much more than that, and | don’t think anyone else did. 
All that anyone knew is that something very large would happen 
very soon, and that there wasn’t much of a way out of it. The future 
hung like a hurricane on the horizon, and my typical bravery (or 
pretended bravery) was impeded by my father’s obvious distress. 


“| need you to be strong for this, Sweet Pea,” he told me as we 
drove towards home. “No matter what happens, you need to be as 
clever and as brave and as good as you can be. And never forget 
that | love you.” 


Years later, he told me that he had been genuinely afraid that he 
would die in those early days of the Troubles and leave me stranded 
in the world. 


When we got home, my father instructed me to gather up a few 
changes of clothing and other essentials. We were going to spend 
the night at the chapterhouse and see what happened, he said, but 
we had to be prepared in case we weren't able to come back home 
immediately. This provided some measure of reassurance — | was 
going to be among friends, and thus reasonably safe — but the idea 
that we wouldn't be able to return to our own home worried me 
greatly. | packed a few books along with me just in case, along with 
my mother’s old guitar. It looked like we were preparing for vacation, 
or perhaps a siege, with all the supplies we had stuffed in the car. 


| recall feeling an intense bout of homesickness as we pulled out of 
the driveway, leaving the house | had grown up in. We wouldn't 
return for ten months, only to find a house picked clean by looters. 


It was a little over an hour’s drive to the chapterhouse. My father 
kept the radio on, flipping between stations constantly and scanning 
for any sort of news. | was on phone duty, answering texts and calls 
from his Initiative contacts. Mostly, everyone was confused and just 
trying to work out the rumors from the truth. 


When we arrived at the chapterhouse, we were barely able to get 
our belongings in the door before my father was swept up in official 
business. The place was in chaos — everyone running about all 
trying to do everything all at once, luggage piled everywhere, people 
shouting over each other, and me in the middle. 


The other kids my age had all been collected in one place, both out 
of the middle-school tendency to clump together and the adults’ 
desire to keep us out from underfoot. We weren’t young enough that 
we needed direct parental supervision, but we were too young to 
actually be of much help, so we found ourselves under the watchful 
eye of ‘Brickjaw’ Levit. One of the Wolves, though a more temperate 
man than his position would imply. 


| sought out my friends among the group. Though we didn’t see 
each other particularly often, they were often better friends than 
most of my peers at school. It was far easier to talk to them, 
because we were all part of the same secret club. | could spin tall 
tales of my parents' misadventures (some of them were even true), 
and the others would accept me for it. 


With nothing left to do but entertain ourselves, we turned our last 
night of normalcy into an adventure. We were a band of plucky kids 
ready to take on the world, running about, fighting monsters that 
would still be imaginary for a few hours more. Someone’s mom 
ordered us pizza. We made popcorn, watched some movies. One of 
the other girls had brought a make-up kit, which we used to torment 
Brickjaw.8 For one last glorious night, all the rest of the world and all 
its troubles were far away. The early reports of deaths and strange 
happenings didn’t reach our ears at all. 


| didn’t see my father until shortly after midnight. He had been 
completely consumed by his meetings? and barely had the energy 
to keep himself awake. This was just as the first videos were coming 
out of Berlin. Someone turned on CNN (muted, thankfully), and we 
watched twenty-five thousand dragons circling above the city in 
stunned silence. The world was over, the world was beginning, the 
world was changed forever, and | was changed with it. 


The following days and weeks would be far less pleasant. The 
outside world felt the full force of the Troubles and tumbled towards 


collapse. 


It was during this time that | found myself gainfully employed by a 
rather unexpected boss. 


Footnotes 

1. Childhood literacy is a dangerous thing. It leads children to think, 
and there is no end to the troubles that come from that. My father 
was a firm believer in the principle, for which | am very thankful. 

2. A fitting comparison, as the last earthling to set foot on another 
world, theOpportunityrover, sent its final transmission in 2021. 

3. A delightful book, though | don’t know of any copies that have 
survived. 

4. lf | recall correctly, | called her a “Lump of foul deformity shat out 
of [her] mother’s fat, poxy nethers”. | was an odd child. 

5. My father was on very good terms with the administration - he 
helped out a lot with field trips and the like and worked the 
concession stand during the soccer season. For a small private 
school, that can mean a lot. 

6. The Initiative kept a small stable of anchorites and stylites as a 
sort of early warning system for the spiritual forecast, as it were. 

7. Not before describing it as a “disturbance in the Force”, which 
was both surprisingly fitting and pretty funny, in an endearing dad- 
joke sort of way. It didn’t break the tension, but it helped. 

8. The man had truly miraculous patience. He claimed it was from 
herding goats. 

9. | found out later that much of the debate was whether or not to 
share the forecast with the Foundation and other groups we were in 
contact with. They never reached a conclusion. 


A Funeral On Mars 


There was a funeral on Mars. No one was invited.