Chapter 31 - A Journey to the Past Part 1

Northeastern Region

Ancient City of Samaria

Blood, blood, and more blood painted the rocky ground. Dead bodies of different genders and ages were scattered all over the area. It was a full moon and aside from it, the only thing that showed the grotesque sight in the middle of the night was the large fire burning in the houses, barns, and plants.

Not one soul was seen because not one soul was spared. Even animals - pets or livestock - weren’t given a chance to live. There was one man however that seemed to enlighten the lifelessness of the place. He was walking around the dead bodies, scanning them through his golden-like hazel eyes until he found one body he was looking for.

It was of a woman bathed in blood. Her knee and elbows had gashes resulting from crawling in a panic to escape her captors. Her chest had a long blade slash along the sternum. Her face had an unsightly blackish-blue bruise near her left eye and a nasty cut from her cheek down to the jawline. Her stomach, near the liver, had a metal sword embedded in it. It still oozed blood.

With one pull of the man’s hand, the sword came free, out of the woman’s throbbing wound. She cried but it was only brief for the pain shortly numbed.

“Rise woman, ” spoke the hooded man with a gentle, lulling voice.

The woman blinked many times, although weakly. She almost thought she was in heaven for the man’s eyes looking down at her were as ethereal as the moon shining above his head. She couldn’t see his face clearly for the hood prohibited it, but she can see the long straight locks of red cascading down his shoulder. It complimented the scarlet robe he was wearing. If not for the coldness of the soil and the smell of metallic blood in the air, she would have really believed she was in heaven.

“Wh-at...happened...” she asked, blood leaking from the corner of her lips. Dry was her throat, and if only there was another cleaner fluid other than the red liquid in her mouth, she would have swallowed it long ago.

The hooded man answered her with silence. She waited and waited, patiently as much as she could, but he did not. After struggling for clean air to fill her lungs, she finally stood up on her own, slowly, in staggering motions, and that’s when she saw the horrific sight before her.

“Oh, God, no...” she gasped, putting a hand in her mouth, willing herself not to vomit.

“Control yourself, ” the man said, sensing her panic and growing heartache, “this is not the right time and place to grieve.”

“But the-se peo-ple! My father and mo-ther!” she cast a look on him, face contorted with sheer distress. She lifted a trembling hand as if to show what was already visible. “Me...” Routing her eyes on the ground, she remembered then everything that had befallen on them. The sudden attack of her city, the horses, the swords, the vile men’s evil smiles, and one soldier’s potent lust for her. She fought and fought though until she drew blood in his face, and that’s when he plunged the sword and everything turned black cold. “Why am I still alive..?” she asked with unfiltered tremors of her voice. “I know I died. I know I did!”

And just like that, she remembered a time when she experienced this same confusion. The time when she was but little, trying to fight her way out of her illness, her labored breathing and feverish death. The time when a certain holy man called her forth from the darkness and pulled her out into the light. A time when she was given a second life...

“Woman, the gift of third life is not to be questioned. Do not doubt what the Heavens will so, ” the unknown man reproached, sure with his words.

“No... I didn’t ask for this!” she cried, broke into short sobs, and knelt on the ground. “I don’t—I don’t want to live when my family is dead...”

Her wounds were still fresh and gaping, and though it was expected that intense pain came along with it, she didn’t feel anything at all. All were numb surprisingly. There was an unbearable pain though that she couldn’t deny, and it was the pain in her heart.

The man closed the gap and stood beside the weeping woman. He placed his left hand on top of her head and gazed at her hopeless form. She’ll come to know why she was given another life in the future... she’ll come to know what her greater purpose is... he was bound to tell her that, yes, but for now, for now... she will have to be strong and he will guide her every step of the way, silently, hiding behind the clouds.

“Come now, sleep, Ysabelle, ” he whispered, and right then and there, a golden glow from his hand appeared and the woman felt a warm feeling before she lost consciousness.

***

“Your Excellencies, ” the red-haired man knelt in front of four aging men sitting in an oblong table. They were in a dark room where only torches lit the colossal beams that surrounded them.

One man, High Priest Eleazar, with a black long beard peered through his own hood and looked straight on the strikingly beautiful man kneeling some distance away from them.

Gone was his hood, showing his red, silky hair shining against the torch fire. Everything about his face was symmetrical; beautifully sculpted nose, eyes that pop out like newly-grown palm leaves, and a comely mouth that was a shy red.

“Mikha’el, our most trusted messenger. What news do you bring now, ” the High Priest said with delight in his eyes. He knew their messenger for quite a long time now, maybe forty or so years to be exact, but amidst this, he found that this certain messenger was no normal man at all. He has not aged at all since they met. He suspected this Mikha’el was sent from the heaven’s above to guide them, but being wise as he is, he kept his suspicion and observations to himself, allowing Mikha’el to do as he wishes - including acting like he was below their ranks, kneeling in their midst, when in fact he was holier than them.

“Sire, the carnage of King Manasseh has reached its limit. Many regions were burned down and totally destroyed, and the people in them...” he paused and lifted his face to meet their gazes, “were all killed.”

A collective but quiet gasp from the group came as an expected response.

“Oh, God, my worst fear has finally happened, ” another High Priest, Azariah, remarked sadly, his gentle eyes beginning to water.

“Men, women, and children were all slain, Your Excellencies, save...for one.”

“You mean there is a survivor?” Eleazar exclaimed with considerable emphasis. He eyed Mikha’el and watched how he easily opened his mouth.

“Technically, no, this one did not survive the massacre.”

“But why do you say so otherwise? What are you meaning to tell us?” Eleazar’s brows furrowed.

“The survivor — as you had called it — is a woman, sire. But she wasn’t spared by the attack at all. She died, but the essence of life returned back to her. She lives again.”

“Damnation!” shouted the third High Priest. He was Joash, the strict priest of the four, who had a shorter gray beard. He stood up and glared at Mikha’el, unable to accept his claim. “We are not fools to believe your words messenger!”

“You don’t need to believe, Your Excellency. You just have to see, ” was Mikha’el’s effortless barb. This made the lofty priest silent. “The woman is the one people call the miracle child once, ” he explained further.

“No... but it had been years since that story was told!” Eleazar went through, shaking his head with reservations. “No one could prove that! We dismissed it as silly gossip in this very room!”

Mikha’el silently scoffed. He need not explain everything to these priests except for the information that they only need to know. “It doesn’t seem to be gossip at all, ” was his comment.

The fourth priest, who had been keeping himself taciturn for most of the conversation, stood up and crossed the room where the messenger was.

“Is she here?” he said, looking down on Mikha’el with cold but compassionate eyes.

“Yes, High Priest Aaron. She is sleeping in one of the temple’s quarters, ” Mikha’el replied, staring at the old man. They both share the same understanding between them that the other three priests didn’t know about or even have an inkling to. It was their secret to keep forever... or at least in the remaining days of the High Priest’s human existence. Aaron actually knows of the supernatural nature of Mikha’el.

“Then lead us there, ” the priest ordered.