Chapter 21
In which forbidden fruit is taken, and no that's not a sexual metaphor
TAMASHII
We made it to the center of the Garden of Eden, only to find out that the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil was this time heavily guarded. It occurred to me how much the original event had been a setup. I mean seriously, in the center of the Garden, low-hanging fruit, no powerful creature protecting it, not involving moving through a deadly swamp with equally deadly gas, Adam has a wife that convinces him to take it, and a snake that actively convinces his wife to try it. I smell a setup.
The guardian this time was Cerberus, not to be confused with Cerebus the Aardvark. They had an honest-to-goodness demon death dog with three heads guarding the place? Where's a streetwise Hercules when you need him? Portia waved goodbye to me. "Wait, you're leaving me to fight this alone? I thought you cared about me!" I protested. She shook her head, "I trust you to manage. You've got Sastra who is a literal demonic teenager to help to out. And more importantly, you've got your family! Besides, I'm not running away." Oh, really? Because it seems an awful lot like you're running from this big beastie over here.
Noting the look on my face, she pointed to the Tree of Life, "Honest. I'm gonna fly over there, pick the Fruit, and plant it in the Swamp. You'll see!" It dawnedon me that someone had to do this. The Fruit of the Tree of Life could restore even the most dead areas back to life, but unlike an apple tree, it would never become overripe, the point at which most fruits fell. In terms of how they looked, the Fruit of Knowledge of Good & Evil was a dragonfruit, while the Fruit of Life looked like a golden apple. She indeed flew off, but I had to assume she either faced her own challenge, or she got greedy and took one for herself, as it was longer than expected before the Swamp was drained and the land turned green again. But anyway, we were too busy fighting our own battles.
Cerberus pounced and clawed with his forepaws trying to scratch at us, or pin us so that he could bite our heads off with one of his heads. But the battle against us was over very quickly. And no, it wasn't because any of us were overwhelmingly strong. It was like Portia said. I had family. I had been trained by Mom to face centaurs before I even started on the mission against Estheriel, and I had been trained extensively as a kid to control my power. But there was also the matter of teamwork between the lot of us. Mom weakened it with Alexander's powers of light, Sastra and I gave one of the heads explosive gas (so to speak) by firing my Soulfire and her Hellfire down its throat. And Dad ran around it, using a Pierce attack in several spots, until the two remaining heads coughed up blood. Portia came flying back, and suddenly noticed the Swamp was gone. "Took you long enough," I said to her. But Portia looked like she was about to cry, "It was so frightening! A giant worm was guarding the Tree!" Lucy, who had all of Ambrosia's experiences up to Estheriel, gave her an enormous hug, "Oh sweetie, I'm sorry you had to go through that! That's terrible."
Uh, anyway, we picked the Fruit of Knowledge, and carried it from the Garden. Unlike before, the animals left us alone. I wasn't sure if the Fruit was ironically forcing them back, or whether they respected our power after beating Cerberus, but we made it back to the ship without incident, setting the apple aside so it wouldn't become lost or mixed with the other produce. Our only job now was making it back safely. I suppose we didn't have to rush too much.
SAPPHIRE
Ambrosia's apathy had made her worse. She no longer ate or drank anything, and it was unethical to force anyone to eat against their will. I did anyway, though just the minimum to keep her from dying. Mostly though, Jesus and I just healed her, as much as her weakened body could stand. She was 5'4" and weighed 108 lb with a cup size of B when we first had split. I was the same size now as then, but her breasts had shrunk to a very flat A (or even AA) cup size, and she had gone from about average body weight to fairly underweight at 92 lb. She wasn't skeleton thin just yet (16 BMI, not yet around 12), but a couple more weeks of this, and she might be an actual skeleton.
It wasn't that she was depressed, so much as completely disinterested in just about everything. I mean, a depressed person is legitimately sad about something, whereas it was a matter of Ambrosia not really wanting or needing anything.
JESUS
Darkness was all around me. Before salvation came to the world, the Afterlife was very simple. A shadowy place known as Sheol. It wasn't nonexistence, but an existence similar to being buried. At the time of Rome, this involved a tomb or cave. But in Pangaea, it largely depended on the location. Atlantis, for instance tossed the dead into the sea, where they would be eaten by fish. But thankfully, I didn't have an Afterlife that resembled that.
Now normally, a person within their Afterlife is completely self-absorbed. They can only see their own pain. That is, had I been a normal person, I would not only see darkness, but had another person been even one foot away from me, it would not have mattered because I would not see or hear other people. And I would replay everything about my life, good and bad, until I resolved things, and was reborn. And some people never did, they were stuck in their own torment unable to disengage. The Afterlife has been reformed more recently, so it's not at all like that any more. I was the last to experience this. The very last, in fact.
While other people were trapped in self-pity or self-congratulation, I loved myself as I did others, and my field of vision immediately widened to include everyone around me. Suddenly, where before there was nothing but darkness, I saw a vibrant world of mountains, waterfalls, and lush plants of colors never seen on any vegetation on Earth. In fact, it could best be compared to the original Garden of Eden, the spiritual land that Adam and Eve once walked. The one Lucy, Nevras, and Tamashii were near was a cheap 20 mile segment, whereas this stretched out for the size of a small continent. There were dark swamps, and brilliant portions, but it had a sort of untamed beauty that was unique to life after one died. Yet none of them could see it because they were trapped in delusion. It was time to wake them. And so, I prophesied to these dry bones, that they might live and be people again. One by one, they roused from their daydreams and nightmares, and saw this world for what it was. I encouraged those on the outskirts to continue waking people up, and within three days there were an awful lot of awakened (not to be confused with woke) people. I had started a movement, and I knew that these disciples would start a reform in the same way that the twelve in the living world were building my kingdom on Earth.
And now it was time for me to go. "I have come not to bring peace, but a sword," I declared, and true to the rules of reality in the Afterlife, one appeared. Not knowing what to make of this, everyone who was aware gave me some space. Using the sword, I sliced straight up, then across, then down, then back across. The air in front of me fell away, replaced by a blue screen of doom of sorts. The Afterlife threw a bunch of computer code and binary at me as it tried to adjust for this hole ripped in its space. I then prophesied to the Opening, saying, "I bid you you stay open." The code sorted itself out, but now it definitely wasn't having any of this. «Unexpected command. Please enter admin password for any new commands.» I knew the admin password. I said, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.." I dipped the sword in the open wounds left by my hanging on the tree. Then I sliced the sword down and across, making a gash in the opening. It made a rebooting sound, and the hole showed, «Password accepted.» The opening closed, and in its place there was a very large gate with everyone in the Afterlife able to see it. My sword shrunk down and became a key, a key that I turned and the door opened. I left the key in the door exited, and hundreds of dead followed behind.
On the other side of the door, I arose in a perfect body, though none saw me yet. What they did see was an earthquake, followed by the dead rising bodily from their graves. This included all of the hybrids who had died before, who now had bodies from of the genetic diseases that killed them, and many had supernatural powers of their own. Even though I had been in the Afterlife for three days, the dead rose instantly after my death, because time didn't work the same way there.
It wasn't until three days passed in the physical world that a new spiritual body was prepared for me to re-enter the world. A body that had no set physical attributes, and could bypass the limits of the world at will. I first appeared to Mary of Magdala, the one also known as Rena (and formerly as Judas), who was visiting the tomb when she noticed the grave was rolled away.
She thought I was a gardener because of my new form, until I said her name, the same way I first called her, "Mary." She stared, "It's you! Jesus what are you doing here?" She rushed to embrace me, but I told her my body was still not really complete yet. And I told them to tell the others. She did, and at first they didn't believe her, but some of them checked the tomb, and saw the cloth that had bound my body lain in a pile, and the stone rolled away. Others saw me when I appeared to them in an upper room later. This time my body was solid, yet able to phase through walls as I wished. Thomas wasn't there though, so he thought everyone was making this up, and insisted that unless he saw the wounds, he wouldn't believe. I appeared later, again appearing through the building, and asked him to touch my wounds and believe. I also ate some food, just to show that I wasn't a ghost and was fully alive.
