As she speaks, her voice is amplified by the lake’s natural acoustics.

‘And it came to pass that our tyrant God, Yahweh, became so fearful and jealous of His own creations that He cast His most beautiful son, the archangel, Lucifer, into the depths of Hell. So selfish was our Creator that He banned His greatest creation, man, from the Garden of Eden. So egotistical was our Vengeful One that He sanctioned blood sacrifices among His most loyal followers. So unforgiving was He that He unleashed a great deluge and drowned His populace. So terrified of man’s intelligence was our paranoid deity that He destroyed the Tower of Babel and scattered the survivors to the four winds, forcing them to speak in different tongues to stifle our ascension as a species, assuring our eventual self-destruction.

‘“Thou Shall Not Kill,” commanded the Great Hypocrite, as He smote us like fish in a barrel and taught us to hate.

‘But even the Great Hypocrite Himself could not stifle the love from our real father, our beautiful Morning Star, who reached out from Hell to instruct us. It is Lucifer who taught us how to taste the fruit of the vine. It is he who replaced abstinence with indulgence, ignorance with curiosity. It was Lucifer who liberated our spirits, encouraging our biological, spiritual, and intellectual ascent, and directed us toward the hidden forces of nature. He is our salvation, and we are his, for the time has come to undo the wrongs of the past and release our father from his unholy bonds.’

The crowd stomps and grunts, their rants causing the porous soil to flood. Across the street, the four owls continue staring, gasping great wheezes of breath.

Dominique fingers the sword, her arms trembling.

Lilith waits until her legion quiets. ‘And now, Yahweh has sent another messenger of pain. But fear not, for the arrival of this Hunahpu shall not cause you more despair. Devlin, your true savior, shall use the Hunahpu’s powers to unseal the Gates of Hell, releasing our father, the archangel, Lucifer!’

Wild stomping and grunts, the crowd trampling one another as it tries to move closer.

Lilith motions for silence. ‘Patience. The blessed resurrection shall be upon you soon enough. Until then, you may take one revolution around Lucifer’s light before returning to your dwellings.’

Dominique watches, dumbfounded, as the procession of the tortured circle slowly around the glowing alabaster tree, their colorful orbs absorbing its energy, glowing brighter as if sucking in its warmth, feeding off the tree’s light.

And then the beings depart, grunting and shoving one another, the bipeds jostling the slower amputees as they return to the village.

Remaining hidden, Dominique uses the smart-binoculars to zoom in upon another object, this one anchored in close proximity to one of the tree’s dangling lower limbs.

It is a wooden cross, supporting a crucified figure.

The head is obscured in a crown of thorns, the blood bleeding blue.

Jacob …

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