Lucifer joined them, his expression grim. “What is this place? What were those things?”
Affaeteres said, “Whatever they are, they are part of our world now.” She glanced at the fiery mountain. “A dangerous world. We must guard against them.”
Bael touched each of his arms gingerly. “I am glad now to know that Leianna was not sent to this world. But my heart is still sick with worry. Did she survive breaching that fiery barrier, trying to reach me, just as I first tried to reach her before the Seraphim lifted us up and flung us into exile here?”
Lucifer answered him bitterly. “I wouldn’t worry about your precious betrothed. Our Creator, I’m sure, has plans for her. She was deliberately separated from you. Worry more about yourself and our people here!”
“He did!” Sharlan defended him fervently, standing beside him, as tall as he was. “He saved me from that beast!”
Affaeteres folded her arms. “He rescued you, yes. But the fire mountain saved us all, lifting the darkness, exposing our attackers.”
Sharlan added: “It did, after you called out to our Creator for help. Perhaps you were heard, however distant we are from Eliom, our homes and the Garden.”
Affaeteres shrugged. A tall woman herself, taller than Lucifer, she looked at him coldly. “What shall we do now, husband?”
He gazed about at the other angelfolk waiting for his response. “The only thing we can do. Explore this world. The Creator was very explicit: we were to be taken to a place where we would be granted free will, even the free will to disobey, a right we were denied in Eliom. Free will implies choice; choice implies things to choose from, decisions to make, here in this harsh world. But it is not a place to die in! We must learn to live in it, with its challenges, punishments and rewards. Oh, yes, our adventure is upon us!” He paused, studying the fire mountain. “I think those fluid streams are on fire, made of molten rock from the mountain and a danger to us below. We must seek higher ground away from it and hope this darkness is merely night in this wilderness.”
The way still was difficult, but they noticed a lower cahn or hill, leading upward and followed it away from the vulcahnoh, the name they gave to the fire mountain.
In their language, Eliomese, vul meant “fire,” although they had never tamed it nor had a use for fire in their lost home world. In Eliom, they only ate the fruits, nuts, vegetables and grains of their fields and orchards, and they heated their cooking and baking alcoves and warmed their residences with their own radiant energy. And as winters passed mildly in Eliom, they built no fireplaces nor knew of such things. The word vul—fire or flame—was reserved for the rare display of lightning and the even rarer lightning strike igniting a bush or tree. Never in all the angelfolk’s experience had a dwelling or person been struck, and so they considered the sky’s vul a display that only the Creator understood.
The word cahn meant “hill” and the word oh meant “great size.” And so they dubbed the fire mountain vulcahnoh, the fire hill of great size, and feared it, knowing the blessings of Eliom were denied them in this hard world.
Unlike the Seraphim, they had no wings, but while in Eliom, they had the special gift of lifting, a discipline of levitation and traveling through meditative thought, off the ground a ways and flying low on air currents to their destination. They quickly found this ability stripped from them in this world.
The most extraordinary trait of the angelfolk—thought transference, an intense concentration that allowed instant travel from one place to another—was only used during spiritual learning and ceremonies conducted by the Seraphim. Adam and his sister Eve had misused it when they thought-transferred to Earth for a forbidden glimpse of Earth’s surface and were stranded on that planet.
No one would dare to thought-transfer in this horrid wilderness. Creator knew where it would land them. And so they had yet to test if that talent still remained.
It seemed that the only safe gifts of Eliom left to them were their healing powers . . . their radiant energy . . . and their minds and bodies. They trudged wearily up the smaller cahn. Both men and women gathered whatever sharp stones could be culled from the rubble beneath their feet, for crude weapons, should the lizard creatures return.
When they reached the hill top, they gazed back across the valley below to the vulcahnoh and what appeared to be a dim mountain range beyond it. The vulcahnoh still spewed forth its streams of fire water, its crown a molten, bubbling mass against the dark sky.
They then turned their gazes in the opposite direction, but their eyes were unable to see beyond the murk.
Lucifer called the women to the center of a circle and set the men around them. “We cannot see the way ahead. I hope that I am not merely optimistic when I suggest that we have arrived in the dark night of this world and that there will be a day and it will bring more light. This hill offers some protection, but we must be prepared to fight if those creatures or others attack us. Yet perhaps we will be lucky in a luckless land.”
“What luck?” Nergal said, his bulk imposingly visible now. “Is our Creator so harsh, simply because we would not incarnate and save the inferior mortals of Earth from what Eve and Adam wrought, to heave us into a land with no sustenance, no shelter or safety, and no means to find such?”
Dagon, now their only spirit master, came slowly toward them, a thin bald shadow in the half-light. “Our Creator will not let us waste away in this barren place. It would neither satisfy nor amuse the One to see our punishment as short-lived as the mortals we disdained.”
“Perhaps it would,” Lucifer said. “It would lend irony to the price for our disobedience. But I also cannot believe the Creator would set us upon such a path. That would invalidate the promise made to us. The Creator must keep that promise, providing us with the means to continue and face our lives with conflicts and choices involving free will. Perhaps our Maker has no inclination to ease us on our way. If so, so be it. We will do whatever is needed to survive. For now, let us rest. I wish to perform an experiment.”
Lucifer bent down and began to select large rocks from those strewn on the ground. He piled them carefully, one supporting the other until they rose a few feet upward. He then knelt and held out his hands to the stones.
Dagon and Lothan, realizing his intention, lent their own radiant energy to the rock pile. Sharlan came over, reaching out her own hands, but Lucifer waved her away, saying, “Wait until we discern the nature of these stones.” She backed away.
A slight burning smell tinged the air, and the brown rocks under Lucifer and Lothan’s hands began to glow a dull purple. But under Dagon’s hands, the uppermost stone changed rapidly from grey to dark red and suddenly burst into flame. Dagon scuttled back, but not before the hem of his robe caught a spark and flames licked its edges. Dagon knelt quickly, suppressing his radiant energy, and pounded the burning cloth with his hands, turning the fabric over and smothering it out.
Some of the remaining rocks also ignited in a shower of leaping flames, the less volatile stones now heating more, turning from purple to bright, glowing lavender. They lent light in a circle a good many yards around the folk.
Lucifer studied the different stones and picked up another cold, grey stone from the ground. “This is our fire starter,” he said, pleased. “We must pile the darker stones first, then add the lighter ones in alternate layers, carefully heating the fire starters in the pile to burn and heat the darker rocks.”
Lothan held out his own hands, his radiant energy contained now, to the glowing rocks for warmth. “There is a chill in this place that our robes bring little comfort from.”
“Then let us gather these stones as new tools and show our people how to safely build these little fire hills, these vulcahnahs, for warmth and for light, and perhaps to assist in food preparation,