*Closing* – 11:25 (The Half-Men)
The Forests of Kilrane had once been a lush and healthy woodland, teeming with natural flora and fauna. Fed by pure springs of life-giving water and nourished by rich fertile soils, that provided an abundance of food sources for those living within and without. But over time, the streams began to shrivel up, and the deep channels saw their levels drop, and then dry up as the upland waters ceased to flow with the strength they once had.
As these changes increased, areas that had once been cool wetlands, became stagnant sloughs. Trees rotted. A slimy green film covered the stilled pools, and animals avoided the brackish waters that had turned bitter. Once lush green grassland meadows, had dried and yellowed into brittle patches of scrubs, and weeds. As if these changes were not bad enough, the inhabitants of the woodlands began to change as other residents began to creep, slither and crawl into the aging woods, whose floor was now covered by a steady stack of fallen and crackling leaves and broken branches, as neither leaf nor limb could gain enough wet nourishment to survive in the dense canopy that coveted not only the rays of the sun, but the nourishment from a slowly sickening and dying soil. Deadness seemed to radiate outward from some central corruption that had undermined the land and its surrounds.
Over time this deadness brought with it a darkness coming from newly arrived inhabitants. Inhabitants that were not merely those of mankind and natural woodland animals, but by others of a sort that fit neither fully into the races of men, nor in that of the animal kingdom. Chimeras.
The eyes of these chimeric inhabitants watched the progress of unwary travelers moving up and down the winding turns of the forest road from the darkness of the deep woods. These strange beings were not born of any natural order but existed under a curse that they themselves had brought upon their variant kinds by invading the Mid-World, in an ancient act of defiance.
These were the Half-Men. They had once been men and women of old, walking upon the Surface World in the days when the land was still young. Before they misused the knowledge given their patriarch to establish dominion over the earth and all its living creatures. Before they took the power of names and twisted its use to perform abominations and perversions.
They were the direct descendants of Cain. Those who, in their desires to become gods, had given their daughters as wives to beings never meant to mingle with humankind in such ways. They were the ones who thought to bring their abominations and debaucheries into the pathways extending towards The Holy Mountain and offer their own sacrifices to The One who had decreed the curse upon their progenitor.
They sought to appease the Holy One, rather than to worship Him. Their actions were merely an attempt rectify their grandfather’s rejected offering of the bounty of the field with sacrifices of things that would bleed upon the altar of Heaven. Again, without either understanding or repentance, their offered up their efforts upon a Holy Alter, thus staining it with the inadequate offering of human effort over an obedient acknowledgement of their need to have their own sins of pride and self-will covered by the slaughtered stand-in.
For each of their abuses in seizing the summoned animals and passing with them through the oculus gate into the Mid-World, these cursed men and women were ripped apart and remade into creatures that were no longer completely whole, either in body, mind, or reason.
For this wickedness, they were banished from the face of the earth, confined to the Mid-World, and would find humanity’s door of Heaven forever shut. By their insolence, they were cursed again to eternally age with the ravages of sin working through their hybrid bodies without the respite of a natural death that would free their souls from their corrupted bodies.
And to their posterity who still remained in the Surface World, they left behind only the bloodied vestiges of what they once were when they dared to traverse from the land cursed by the sins of their patriarch to a place that existed outside of the lands deemed to mankind.
And when, in time, the sins and curse of their fathers reached maturation in the line of their children and the sickness had increased by each of their successive generations, the world was reshaped by water, upheaval and a global cataclysm and all passages between the two worlds went dark.
Like the children born, by means of the only perfect sacrificial offering, into the rebirth of The Lamb are made citizens of and yearn for a Heavenly eternal realm, these cursed half-men, lost in their depravity, were displaced citizens of the buried world that had gone down into its own watery grave and they longed to return and die with it.
They were witnesses to its destruction through mysterious mirroring waters that collected in pools within a mystical woodland. A place regarded by them as a Holy Wood.
Through these mystic pools, they witnessed the rebirth of the old world coming back to The Surface. They witnessed mankind’s preservation through the surviving eight persons, and the surviving animals, with their mates, being set free to populate the wilds of the newly baptized earth.
They witnesses a rededication of the earth to The One, who spoke it into being and also spoke its curse. Recognizing that they could no longer be a part of the baptized Surface World, they ached over the loss.
But rather than repent of their evil, they fell even deeper into the darkness of their hearts. And in that apostasy, they heard, through the waters of the wood, a voice coming from a pool that also railed against The One as they did. A voice like that of an ancient serpent, back in the days of the First Garden set high upon a holy mountain.
And in their rebellion, they took up the words of that subverting voice and repeated its words in a mantra that gave succor to their anger. And eventually, they made that voice their own, joining its call to engage in a war against the Hosts of Heaven, and against the Promised Seed that would one day restore all authority and dominion to their rightful owners.
Every thing that openeth the matrix [H7358] in all flesh, which they bring unto the LORD, [whether it be] of men or beasts, shall be thine: nevertheless the firstborn of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou redeem. [Num 18:15 KJV]
All flesh [is] not the same flesh: but [there is] one [kind of] flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, [and] another of birds. [There are] also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial [is] one, and the [glory] of the terrestrial [is] another. [1 Cor 15:39-40 KJV]
***
The first of these accursed apostates to follow “The Nomad” into the Mid-World was a man named Lamech, from among Cain’s lineage. He had followed the Way of Cain, a path of deceit and violence. When he found the place populated by a small family, he took from the Mid-World a wife out of time, named Zillah, whose name meant “buzzing shadow”.
He brought her to live as his second wife into the city of stone called Enoch by the one who had built it. And in time, she bore him a child which they gave two names for they believed he would be a man of two destinies. His first name was Tubalcain, for they believed he would serve to redeem the legacy of Cain. And for his second name, they chose the word “Pan”. Which meant “All”. For they believed that when he came of age he would with might and strength make all right again and break the curse that had hardened all the world against them. They believed he would be to the one to ultimately crush the head of the serpent.
And they raised him to believe it as well.
But his rise to power brought only desolation and the very judgments of heaven down upon all who followed him and all who would follow in his legacy.
As a young man, Tubalcain learned to harness the power of fire in the melting of ores and he fashioned the first forge of stone for pouring and shaping metal. And with that skill, he fashioned the first weapon designed to pierce and cut the flesh of all living creatures. And he taught others of his craft until he had gained a loyal following of both men and women committed to finding the hole in which the serpent had crawled through to escape the consequence for its ancient deception.
Eventually, Lamech, seeing that his son had grown into a man of influence, might, and power, took his son aside and told him of the secret paths he had learned were still in the high hills secretly following his grandfather in his mysterious nomadic wanderings. And of the mysterious place between the seen and unseen realms where he had taken his mother, from beyond the world of their fathers.
***
“But be very careful! You did not see the LORD’s form on the day he spoke to you from the heart of the fire at Mount Sinai. So do not corrupt yourselves by making an idol in any form–whether of a man or a woman, an animal on the ground, a bird in the sky, a small animal that scurries along the ground, or a fish in the deepest sea. And when you look up into the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars–all the forces of heaven–don’t be seduced into worshiping them. The LORD your God gave them to all the peoples of the earth. [Deuteronomy 4:15-19 NLT]
