Lilith Versus The Seven Demon Gods [ONC 2024]

Chapter Eleven: The Very Flame Of The Luminary

"As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my loved one among the sons. I took my rest under his shade with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."
Song of Solomon 2:3

All it takes is one bite. One sink of the teeth into an apple and as Norea shuts her eyes, savouring through the taste of the mysterious fruit that leaves a red trace over her lips, her body disappears.

The bitten apple falls into the floor in a loud bang as the tree shrinks to nothing, with Lilith's dogs running out of their home. Everything is gone as the sun rises over the material world for a new day to start.

Nora and Lilith's bodies drop into an ocean as if they are the eaten fruit dissolving into their own stomachs. All contractions lead them further away from the material world with all the nutrition leaving their bodies, oxygen evaporating out of them and even tiredness looses its toll on their shoulders.

Lilith and Norea reach the shore of a desert island, their faces cover with a million little rocks. They are fragments of lives, mineral particles of earth with the soul of its ocean. As they get on their feet and brush their clothes clean from the sand, they notice a circular monument afar.

"Eden!" Lilith declares.

Norea presses her lips together, doubt rising in her—this place couldn't be the mythical one described in so many books.

From the distance, it looks like the Colosseum in its elliptical shape with no window but giant rectangular panels of tinted glass instead. Yet its most distinctive feature is a darkened spacecraft hovering over it. Norea can admire this place for hours, her heart breaking at the dream religion that had fed into her mind, but they aren't alone.

A gush of violent wind envelops them, showering them in sand and forcing them to either collapse onto the ground or swallow into thin air. When it stops, their ears ring, and their eyes slitter back into the enormous frame of Gadreel now standing in front of them.

Fear shot right into Norea's spine at the beast. She could only get back up on her feet to find Lilith.

As Norea is about to wrap her arms around her, Gadreel raises on his back legs and, with one of his powerful arm, picks Lilith up from the ground. He holds her tight on its clutch, squeezing her to suffocation.

Struggling, Lilith spits into the face of Gadreel. "Firm handshake for the lowest scum of all the demons." Another tornado breath of Gadreel blows into Lilith's face in answer, and after a shiver, she wrinkles her nose. "I see. Nobody has taught you how to brush your teeth yet."

Sweat streams down Norea's forehead, who now faces alone the capture of Lilith. Her knees buckle down, and slowly, with an increasing pang, fear took over her whole body. Her breaths speed up out of her mouth to the infernal rhythm of her dreaded heart, and she joins her hand in prayer, but nothing could save her.

"Lilith, help!" Is all Norea could mutter out.

From the height of her snare, Lilith rolls her eyes. "Can you see, I'm a bit in a pickle there, Norea dear?" Lilith then clenches her jaws—the only thing she could do. "I can't really summon my sword here, or else I'll mark your ugly face with a scar, Gadreel!" Sarcasm shot out through Lilith's gritted teeth as her restless feet try to hurt her assailant in vain. "Did you ever try to invoke your thoughts, Norea? You know, a little shout of Epinoa?"