Rebirth of the Nephilim

“Look, this really doesn’t seem to be all that helpful for my current situation.”

Dys let out a frustrated huff as she shuffled through the pages of the book in front of her. While there were some interesting and detailed illustrations about anatomy, she couldn’t tell if they were for medical purposes or artistic. Possibly both. Either way, she couldn’t read anything written, since it was all in an entirely unfamiliar language. The letters used weren’t even the Imperial alphabet. Supposedly, this was one of the most recent books added to the collection, but that didn’t mean it was anywhere near current, or in a readable format.

“Not that I want to seem ungrateful or even uninterested,” Jay rushed to say as she turned her gaze away from the scroll of musical notations in front of her. “But even if I could read this, I can’t use art lessons to defeat the Demon horde in Kastoria. These all seem like the kinds of documents that would be great for peace time. Not war.”

“You will find that is the case for most of what your ancient kin left behind,” Techne stated in his monotone voice. “Asteria was not a warlike nation.”

“I can see that,” Syd murmured under her breath as she closely examined an extremely explicit depiction of seven Nephilim and a single female elf that had been painted on a large canvas. “They, uh, had some really creative ideas back then, didn’t they?”

“Oh, I remember that one,” Soteria commented from behind Syd. “I believe that’s supposed to depict the invention of the—what was the word? Dil—”

“Okay, putting this one away for now,” Syd rushed to say as she pushed the painting back towards the center of the circular platform. “That’s a history lesson for another time, thank you.”

“Are there any records in here that might lead me to a hidden cache of ancient Nephilim artifacts, maybe?” Jay questioned the Golem. “Preferably ones that cause large explosions or can empower hundreds of soldiers, or maybe heal thousands of people in one go?”

“There are no such records in the archive,” Techne shook his head. “I do not believe any enchanted weapons of the power you are requesting survived the battle of the Last Bastion. However, there is a map of Asteria’s capital city, Aster. You will find the city armory is listed. Perhaps that will be of aid?”

“Worth a shot,” Jay nodded. “Pull it up, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly,” Techne replied calmly as he waved his hand.

Before her, the glowing gold and blue interface of the Hall of Memories shifted. The immaterial images of thousands upon thousands of books, scrolls, paintings, and similar mediums of information passed by in the blink of an eye. A few seconds later, a large map shifted into view in front of Jay, increasing in size until it filled up all the space in front of her. The translucency that it had possessed while in transit went away as the image resolved into a perfect copy of what had at one time been a real map. Jay reached out and ran a finger over the dry parchment, marveling at the power of the illusion that allowed her to not only see the ancient item but touch it as well.

The city itself was a work of art. Every street, alley, and passage looked like it had been purposefully plotted out to create a swirling vortex that reminded Jadis of a seven-pointed star, or possibly the petals of a flower. Each building complemented the ones next to it, and she could tell just by the illustration that a large number of gardens and flowerbeds had been incorporated into the design of the roads and side streets. Walking through the city of Aster had probably been like entering a living painting.

“Can you help me read it, please?” Jay asked as she examined the highly detailed city map. “I can’t tell what these notations mean.”

“Of course. These are street names. These are elevation markers. These are—”

Jay paid careful attention to the Golem’s explanation of the map as her other selves continued to peruse the massive library of knowledge she had been given access to. She didn’t know what she was looking for, or what use she might have for anything within the ancient archive, but she was honestly still reeling from the revelation that the Hall of Memories even existed, so she was mostly just trying to adjust to that new fact in her life.

The Hall of Memories had been designed to be a repository of all the culture and history of the Nephilim that would outlast the species should anything apocalyptic happen to them. Ephesius, the last Nephilim to set foot in the circular chamber, had also been the Hall’s creator. He had seen what had happened to both the Merrow and the Dvergr, and so Ephesius had made it his life’s work to create a place where the Nephilim civilization would be preserved for all time, just in case.

Considering what had happened to the nation of Asteria and its people not long after the archive had been completed, Jadis wondered if some divine muse might have influenced the master craftsman.

Regardless of the source of his motivation, Ephesius was truly worthy of the title master craftsman, even if his only accomplishment was the creation of the Hall of Memories. The enchantments were a marvel, beyond anything Jadis had ever seen or heard of anywhere else in all of the Empire, or beyond for that matter. The large stone platform that her selves stood upon was actually more than nine hundred two-inch thick stone discs stacked on top of each other, and each had been inlaid with countless runes and enchantments. A cylinder of compacted eleria more than one hundred and fifty feet long had been inserted into the middle of the stack of discs, the top of which was flat, round crystal that Jadis had first noticed in the center of the platform. The chamber that Techne had stood watch over for the past two thousand years was just the interface panel. The rest of the archive went straight down into the immutable stone of the mountain.

The enchantments crafted into the Hall of Memories were designed to hold knowledge. Ephesius had brought countless books, scrolls, and other items of cultural significance to the chamber and performed a process that Jadis heretofore had only associated with her old life back on Earth; he had scanned them. Every page, letter, and errant doodle had been replicated within the massive archive, creating a kind of magic version of a virtual library. With only a slight push of magic poured into specific enchantments, as outlined by Techne’s instructions, one could pull up the archived tomes and view them as an interactive illusion. Ephesius had even gone so far as to give the illusions the sensation of physical touch, just to make it easier for future generations to interact with the virtual books and scrolls contained within.

It was just a shame that the genius craftsman hadn’t thought of implementing some kind of auto-translation tool into his Hall of Memories. Linguistic drift probably hadn’t been on the man’s mind, much less the possibility that the Nephilim who came to view the archives in the future wouldn’t know how to speak ancient Nephilim at all. It was not for the first time that Jadis silently wished that Oros had some kind of mind magic, so that she could just download the knowledge that she needed directly into her brain. Alas, Eldritch magic only affected the senses, not the mind directly. Which was a good thing, Jadis thought every time her mind went down that road, because she would not want to have to deal with Demons or cultists who could directly influence her mind with a simple spell.

“Is Aster where the final battle, the Last Bastion I mean, happened?” Jay asked after Techne had finished his explanation of the map’s key.

The old Golem was silent for a moment. Lifting his right hand, he ran it across the smooth surface of the illusory map in a surprisingly tender motion. Techne, like all the Golems Jadis had met before, came across as somewhat emotionless, or at least severely muted. Maybe it was his human, or rather Nephilim, appearance that made the difference, but Jadis found that she was able to read the Golem’s emotional state much more easily than someone like Una or Myron.

“It was not,” he stated in his usual monotone. Turning to look at her, he put a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Though Aster was the last city to fall, the Last Bastion was not Aster, but a fortress in the mountains to the northeast. I will show you.”

A different map was pulled up then, this one showing the nation of Asteria as it once was, thousands of years in the past. Jadis saw the capital city, nestled on the edge of a lake in about the middle of what more modern maps called The Crook. Other cities and towns were indicated on the map, some of which Jadis thought she might have passed over during her flight to Meli’s family grove. She could see where the Hall of Memories was as well, since it had been marked on the map, showing that they were almost directly east of the capital, with a slight bend southward.

“Here,” Techne pointed at a marker. “This is The Last Bastion of the Nephilim, where the few of your people who remained in Asteria after the initial assault fled to for safety and made their final stand.”

The point the Golem had indicated was to the north of their current location, also on the edge of the mountain range. Overlaying what she was looking at with the more modern map she had in her mind, Jadis guessed that the Bastion was right on the border between Volto and the Kingdom of Parusyat.

“Why did they go there?”

“It was a castellum, a stronghold, called Lapis Aeris,” Techne answered Jay’s question with a teacher’s patience. “One of many such strongholds, though it was one of the older and more established of its kind. There was an eleria mine there, and a processing facility, along with a great multitude of workshops from which many of the enchanted weapons and armors which were used by the Asterian military came. There were other facilities built over time, including an observatory and a testing arena for some of the more experimental magics that were invented.”

Techne’s explanation reminded Jadis of the depictions of secret military bases she remembered from Earth. Sure, most of the examples she could think of were from fiction, but there were also some mysterious, real-world locations that she could name that came to mind. Jadis wasn’t certain that a direct comparison could be drawn, but she couldn’t help but picture this Lapis Aeris as being a place where the ancient Nephilim came up with amazing, nigh on impossible creations of magic. Her expectations couldn’t help but be high, considering the unparalleled power being put on display by the Hall of Memories.

“Maybe that’s where I should be going to look for things that might help with the current war,” Dys murmured as she moved closer to the map.

“Or one of those other strongholds you mentioned,” Syd suggested as she approached from the other side.

“I do not believe you will find anything of use,” Techne shook his head. “Lapis Aeris was thoroughly destroyed by the invading Demons during the last months of the war. Nothing remains except for stone ruins and the bones of your people.”

Jay frowned and turned to face Techne.

“You know this for sure? You’ve been there?”

“I have not left the Hall of Memories since Ephesius left it in my care,” the Golem motioned to the throne he had been sitting on when Jadis had first entered the chamber. “My duty is to maintain and safeguard the knowledge within this hall. I have dedicated my life to this purpose. I will not abandon my duty, nor will I leave this place, so long as my core still functions.”

“Techne gets his current affairs news from me,” Soteria stated from where she still sat on one of the thrones, eyes closed and head leaning back. “What little of it I get myself, these days. The Last Bastion has been picked over by the remnants of Asteria’s people, those few who survived, and all those who have come after for centuries. There is little left but carved rock and faded memories.”

“I would still encourage you to go there.”

Jay turned back from looking at the ancient Dryad to face Techne.

“Why?”

“It is the final grave of your people’s now lost civilization,” the Golem said solemnly. “You should see it, with your own eyes.”

Jadis felt a twinge of guilt at Techne’s words. The Nephilim weren’t really her people. She had no connection to them, other than her blood, she supposed, and that was entirely because D had chosen to reincarnate her as one of his divine mother’s lost avatars. He could have given her a new life as a tall human woman with an extra big package to hide under her skirt and Jadis would have been just as happy. It was what she had expected when she had answered D’s question about what she wanted to be reborn as, at any rate. Becoming a Nephilim was… the best thing that had ever happened to her, honestly, but still. She had no true connection to the people who had once lived on Oros and had been wiped out millennia ago. Having Techne treat her as some kind of heir to a lost civilization was… well, it felt like she was lying to the man about something he truly cared about.

“I—I don’t think it would mean as much to me as you think it will,” Jay admitted after a moment of hesitation. “I don’t have any connection to Asteria. I didn’t even know it existed until last year. This is all… foreign to me. I’m not—I don’t know who these people were.”

Techne turned away from her, his golden eyes staring at the map of a nation that no longer was and had not been for countless generations. He was quiet for a long while, still as stone, before a small smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

“As has always been the case, Ephesius’ wisdom outshines my own.”

Turning back to look at her, the Golem smiled at Jay, his expression surprisingly caring despite his inflectionless tone.

“That is why my friend made this place. He knew better than I that it would take a long time before his people returned to Oros. Whether you are the product of Nephilim who have remained hidden in safety far, far away from the troubles of the world, the random chance of bloodlines crossing in the most perfect yet unlikely of ways, or some form of divine intervention, you are a Nephilim who does not have knowledge of her people. This archive was made for you. It is for you to use, to learn, and to do with as you will. I am its steward, but you are the successor. Do not fear that you have no connection with Asteria. You do not have to. That you are Nephilim and are willing to learn is enough.”

Jay swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. It felt like a huge responsibility had been laid on top of her. Logically, things had not changed. She had been the Last of the Nephilim that morning, no different than she was at that moment. It had been her plan for a while to repopulate and rebuild the Nephilim as a people. But now, with Techne’s hand on her shoulder, she could feel the weight of an ancient expectation right next to that Golem’s hand. It was, in a way, terrifying. But at the same time, Jadis couldn’t imagine running away from the responsibility. The Nephilim had been wiped out because of an unjust God’s malign will. They deserved better.

“Okay,” Jay said softly, giving the Golem a small smile. “I’m here. And I do want to learn.”

“But I do need to focus on Demons who are invading the world right now,” Dys pointed out, “otherwise there won’t be any point to me learning anything about Asteria or the ancient Nephilim.”

“Of course,” Techne nodded. “And I will do what I can to aid you. The knowledge contained within the archive does not heavily emphasize the tactics used in warfare by the Asterian military, but perhaps I can find a few books on their more successful campaigns.”

“Maybe you can give me the records of what happened leading up to the downfall of Asteria?” Dys posed the question. “I don’t know how much it will help, but it might give me an idea for weapons, or what doesn’t work, or even some clues about tactics we can try in the current war.”

“My information on the fall is limited,” the Golem said, “but there are some records I can provide. I will compile all that is available.”

“Actually, it doesn’t necessarily have to be about war,” Jay interrupted the Golem before he could pull up more of the illusory books. Inspiration had struck, and she hoped that the thought would lead somewhere useful. “Anything on the more advanced forms of enchanting that have been written could be way more helpful.”

“I believe you said that you are not yourself a craftswoman?” Techne pointed out.

“I’m not, no,” Jay confirmed. “But I know people who are.”

“You said this archive is for the Nephilim,” Syd said as she leaned over her Jay self’s shoulder. “But since I’m the last Nephilim, that means I can share it with whomever I want, right?”

“That is your right,” the stone man nodded in agreement. “This is your heritage. So long as it is not destroyed, you are free to use it as you see fit.”

“Well, then I hope you’re prepared to answer a lot, and I mean a lot of questions,” Syd smirked. “Because my girl Sabina is going to drain you and this archive dry of every scrap of knowledge even tangentially related to enchantments.”

“I will be happy to pass on the knowledge to a willing student,” Techne smiled. “That is why this place was made, after all.”

Syd’s smirk faded a little as she looked at the Golem consideringly. The question had been there for a while, ever since he had first explained the purpose of the Hall of Memories to her, but Jadis had not asked since she had so many other questions rolling around in her heads. She saw that the opportunity had come to ask, and so took it.

“I understand why Ephesius poured so much effort into this place,” Syd began. “He wanted to make sure the memories of the Nephilim never died out, even if they did. But why are you so dedicated to this place? You’ve given up over two thousand years of your life to watching over this archive, with no one for company but occasional visits from that old loon over there.”

“Loon had better be a compliment, young sapling,” Soteria called out.

“It’s a very pretty bird,” Syd called back, but kept her attention on Techne. “Anyway, I guess I’m just curious about why this means so much to you, when you aren’t a Nephilim yourself.”

The Golem nodded in understanding as he placed a hand on his bare chest.

“I am not a Nephilim. However, my body was carved by a Nephilim master sculptor, Alphius, at the request of my mother and father. Alphius was Ephesius’ father. In that way, Ephesius was not just my friend, but my family. At least, that is how I have always thought of him. The Hall of Memories was important to him, and so, it is important to me. Does that… make sense?”

“It does,” all three of Jadis answered, smiling at the Golem’s almost uncertain expression. “It truly does. And I promise that I won’t let all of this effort go to waste.”

“Then I have no regrets,” Techne said as his expression lightened. “Now, to prepare for the coming of your Sabina, I will create a list of texts for her to start with. If you can tell me what subjects she will find most appealing, I can begin translating those texts ahead of time.”

“You might as well start alphabetically,” Syd laughed. “Sabina is going to want to read them all.”

“Translating seven thousand four hundred and forty-one texts will take some time, but I will begin immediately.”

“…fuck me, she’s never going to want to leave this place.”