Reign of the Rebel, Chapter 2 (of 4)

The following is a sample from a forthcoming novel by Alexander Lawrence. If you like what you read, please visit the Kickstarter campaign for Reign of the Rebel.

The first four chapters are also available in audio format at https://soundcloud.com/user-243061771/reign-of-the-rebel-chapters-1-4

Click here if you missed chapter one.

CHAPTER TWO: BABEL

1632 Anno Mundi (Year of the World)

“I feel as if I’ve been accosted.”

The words rolled off Ditanu’s tongue as easily as words ever had, but they were not familiar to him in the least. The meaning of the words was correct, conveying as intended his unpleasant thought, but the sounds were all wrong. Speaking, something he had done his entire life, was suddenly an alien experience.

He looked at his friend and tried again: “What did I just say?”

Raamah gazed back at him with a frown, eyebrows scrunched up. “What did you say? What did I just say?”

“Nothing I have ever heard before.” Ditanu looked down and grabbed the sides of his own head as if to hold in his sanity. “I understand you, but I do not know how I understand!”

These words coming from his mouth were unwelcome foreigners who had overrun the landscape of his mind. Trespassers, malefactors! Where were the natives? Everyone that belonged in the territory had fled—no, not fled, disappeared, vanished entirely. There was no trace; the foreign invaders had massacred them all and disposed of the husks.

“I saw a great light,” said Raamah. “Did you see it?”

“Yes, it enveloped everything and faded again in a blink.” There had been a bright flash that banished every shadow in the world but for a moment, and with the light had come an uncomfortable shift in his head, as if his inner man had been shoved to the floor and gagged. The invasion had been brief, though, before life in his head returned to normal. “Raamah, my speech is strange, but all else feels unaltered. Do you—”

Raamah cut him off with a gesture and moved towards the window. “Listen,” he said, pointing outside.

Ditanu listened, hearing voices but no intelligible words. “I cannot comprehend the conversations,” Ditanu said.

“Nor can I,” said Raamah. He headed for the door. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the Forum. The other constables will think to assemble there.”

They descended the steps from the second level of the building they were in, taking them two at a time, and rushed onto the street. A woman and her child were standing in the threshold of a house on the opposite side. The woman looked frightened and called out to them in a language they did not understand. It sounded not unlike the chirping of a bird. A man on the roof of an adjacent building also spoke, but his words were guttural and coarse, nothing like the woman’s speech.

Whatever had happened, thought Ditanu, had happened to all.

Ignoring the others, Raamah and Ditanu took to their donkeys and made haste for the city Forum.

===

Chaos ruled the Forum.

The doors to the single-chambered structure had been left open, and nearly half of the city’s constables were standing inside, squabbling, pacing, and gesticulating.

Some of the men were wailing and tearing their garments. Others were trying to communicate with one another through pictures by drawing on the dusty floor with their fingers. One quick-thinking individual had brought charcoal and a tanned goat hide. He used gestures to supplement his rudimentary charcoal sketches. It was a good attempt, but judging by the onlookers’ faces, he wasn’t getting anywhere. Expressing complex ideas through drawings was not an easy enterprise. Most of the constables neither lamented nor made images; instead, they clustered in small groups, talking intensely to those who shared their speech.

Raamah scanned the crowd and quickly spotted Kush and Havilah, his father and brother, standing together at the head of the room. Ditanu followed in Raamah’s wake as he weaved through the crowd to get to his family. As they went, Ditanu took note of the words embossed on a large copper plate affixed to the wall behind Kush. It was gibberish to him now. He knew from memory what the phrase said, though: A better future through togetherness. It made him sigh.

As Raamah approached his kin, all three of them spoke over each other in their eagerness to test one another’s comprehension. They were relieved to discover that they could indeed communicate.

“On a day of ill fortune, we have this balm,” said Kush while embracing his son.

Havilah told Raamah, “From what we’ve seen so far, family members tend to share a language.” He glanced at Ditanu.

“We speak alike,” said Ditanu in response to the unspoken question. “Raamah and I may not share blood, but it sometimes feels like we do.”

Havilah nodded. Just then, something occurred to Ditanu and he stooped to the ground without explaining himself. He put an index finger to the dust and tried to write the first thing that came to mind.

Nothing came out. He didn’t know what letters to use.

“What are you doing?” said Havilah.

“Trying to write.”

“Write what?”

“Anything. Anything at all.” He looked up from his crouch. “I cannot do it.”

Wide-eyed, Raamah and Havilah both lowered themselves and made an attempt. They were no more successful than Ditanu.

Havilah put his palm to his forehead in shock. “I… I cannot remember even a stroke. I’ve lost the entire alphabet.”

Raamah pounded his fist on the floor and growled.

“Of course they would take our script,” mused Kush. “It completes the punishment.”

“They? Do you have some idea why this has happened?” asked Raamah. He stood up.

“There is only one possible explanation,” his father said. “Babili, the gate of the gods, has been visited by them.”

Raamah looked down in thought. “We should have known they would take offense at our ascendancy,” he said.

“It had crossed my mind that some of the immortals might not want company. I’m sure Noah’s God and his forces are behind this.”

Ditanu scowled, saying, “Is there no end to his cruelty? He is ever striving to keep us ignorant and powerless.”

“And we will ever resist his tyranny,” said a steel-faced Raamah.

Kush nodded but sighed, saying, “I would not disagree, but let us admit that we have been incapacitated for the foreseeable future. This was a severe blow.”

“From which we may learn but not cower,” said Raamah.

Ditanu smiled at his friend. “He has a lion’s heart.”

“Just so,” said Kush, placing his hands on Raamah’s shoulders, “and we will all draw strength from it, but you must also show the wisdom of the owl and the brilliance of the sun in the days ahead.”

Raamah began to reply but stopped when someone started yelling a word over and over: Miko! Miko! Ditanu didn’t know what it meant but could tell by the tone that something serious was happening. Everyone looked at the shouting man, somewhat perturbed to have their own ruckus overpowered. He stood at a western window, jabbing his index finger repeatedly at something outside.

The Tower is in that direction, thought Ditanu.

They rushed to the window and gaped. The sky over the Tower was thick with dark clouds that swirled directly above its unfinished structure. They were looking at a menacing storm cell only a couple of miles wide, alone in the middle of an otherwise clear sky. Ditanu thought he understood what it signaled.

“They mean to bring it down,” he said, hardly believing his own words. “Forty-three years of labor—nearly my whole life—and the immortals are going to push it over in a day.”

After a moment of silence, Raamah said, “He’s right. What else could it be?”

Kush and Havilah stiffened and looked at one another. They spoke a name in unison: “Kainam.”

“Kainam? Is he inside?” said Raamah.

Kush nodded, turning his gaze back to the soaring edifice. “I was there not an hour ago. He was in his study.”

“That’s in the lower levels,” remembered Raamah. Everyone knew Kainam’s worth, so it didn’t surprise Ditanu when he saw the intention enter Raamah’s eyes. “I’ll go warn him, make sure he gets out,” said Raamah.

“We go together,” retorted Havilah.

“No, stay here,” said the young man, hand out. “As elders, both of you are needed. Think of the family.” Raamah didn’t stick around to hear their response.

“I’m with you,” said Ditanu, already out-pacing his companion on the way to the door.

===

Whips flailing, they pushed the donkeys as fast as they would go, which was not nearly fast enough, or so it felt to Ditanu in that moment. The distance between the Forum and the nearest stairway coming off the Tower was over six hundred reeds. To cover that on foot would require almost half an hour, but Raamah and Ditanu needed to cover the same ground in mere minutes, and who knew whether they could afford even that. The layout of the city worked to their advantage, though; it was a straight shot between their origin and destination. As the road was kept even and unobstructed, the donkeys were able to race without great risk. All Ditanu had to do was yell at pedestrians to move, and trust that people would get the gist through context. To be sure, there were very few pedestrians that might obstruct them, because nearly everyone on the brick-paved road was traveling the opposite direction, away from the Tower where so many had labored. Their faces, Ditanu noted, were a consistent mixture of frustration, confusion, and fear. In the long line of men whom he passed, not one displayed any other expression. Disheartened, he decided not to look upon their faces further.

As he rode, Ditanu turned as much of his attention as he dared to the Tower. The sun was at his back and not yet half-way to its zenith, and its rays fully illuminated the colossus of baked bricks looming ahead of him. Appreciating it anew, he took in the sight intently to make of it a vivid and undying memory. Ditanu knew that he was looking upon its greatness for the last time. The architecture was neither ornate nor complex, for it was little more than a series of progressively smaller boxes stacked one atop another, with ramps connecting the exterior walkways of each level, but the sheer size of the thing, lofty as the mountains and broader than the rivers, demanded awe just short of worship. That man could accomplish such a wonder with little more than mud and sweat, after having clawed his way back from the brink of extinction, was no small marvel.

The amount of time, energy, and resources that had gone into its construction was nigh unfathomable. To think that it would come to naught before completion, all the work and the years swept away like chaff in a moment’s winnowing, was mind-numbing. Like all of the men of Babili, Ditanu had done his fair share of hard labor on the Tower, rendering back-breaking service for four moons out of the year, year after year. His closest platonic relationships had been formed during those stints.

Ditanu kept an eye out for Kainam in the long line of workers moving away from the Tower, as he assumed Raamah would also. The Overseer would be hard to miss, given that he was always the most ornately dressed of the Shinareans, and he would almost certainly be using his chariot. He was nowhere to be seen, however.

Raamah’s donkey hit a bump and half-faltered, then recovered without losing its stride. Ditanu looked over at his friend. He seemed unfazed, but Ditanu could not say the same for the donkey. Raamah was not a small man, and his mount was laboring mightily to sprint under him. Ditanu’s own beast frothed with sweat and burned from exertion, and he wondered whether it would complete the run. It had never been asked to carry a man so far, so quickly.

The donkeys had taken Raamah and Ditanu more than half-way to the Tower when the lightning began. The riders both twitched in surprise as the storm’s first bolts shot between the clouds. Ditanu willed his mount to make it to the end before the storm built to full power.

He looked up and grimaced. The unnaturally stationary and isolated storm cell over the Tower swirled more threateningly with each passing minute, and it had taken on an eerie greenish cast unlike anything he’d seen before.

Just then they passed over the short bridge which spanned the square moat around the Tower. It was a narrow, shallow moat but with a perimeter of great length due to the enormous footprint of the Tower. Digging the moat and a trench to connect it to the Euphrates River had taken years. Ditanu didn’t understand what it was for, but Kainam had been adamant about surrounding the Tower with water.

Men were still steadily filing out of the building, looking surprised to see the strange storm clouds twisting overhead. The height of the Tower was such that, even with stairs, ramps, and the pulley system Kainam had devised, it took over an hour for everyone to empty out. Ditanu knew that there were still many men inside, unaware of the danger.

At last Ditanu and Raamah reached the steps of the Tower, where they dismounted before the donkeys had even come to a stop. Before them stretched a very long staircase that would take them to the top of the Tower’s tall base. The rest of the stairs were inside the building, along with Kainam’s clever platforms that rose and fell by the use of thick ropes, wheels, and trained elephants. There were also wide ramps spiraling around the exterior of the Tower, used to transport bricks to the utmost heights. Workers would stack clay bricks in large numbers onto sleds with greased skids, and teams of oxen would then pull them up the inclines. But work had ceased, and no further teams of oxen ascended with loads.
As Ditanu and Raamah arrived, lightning began to strike the uppermost levels of the Tower. The bolts were unnaturally fierce, breaking off chunks of the facade that within minutes would become a serious threat to anyone standing below. Ditanu wondered if the immortals would use lightning or wind to destroy the building, and it awed him to think about how strong either would need to be in order to accomplish the feat. Suddenly he was terrified to approach the Tower. He froze.

Raamah sprang up the first steps two-at-a-time before he noticed that his friend was not with him. He paused just long enough to turn, read Ditanu’s face, and speak two words: “No time.” Then he took off like an arrow loosed from one of his beloved hunting bows.

I could so easily die, Ditanu thought while watching Raamah go up. I’m only sixty years old; I’ve barely lived. And what will become of me if I perish? Will the gods of the underworld look favorably upon me? I have lived honorably, but is it enough to secure my place? Well, best not to think on those things now. Best merely to act, as Raamah does.

Against his better judgment, he thawed himself and followed his insane, courageous companion up the entryway.

Four doorless gates granted access to the Tower, one positioned at each of the cardinal directions, and each gate wide enough to admit an elephant. Two were used for entry and two for exit, and since the workers were still observing that convention for the most part, the entrances stood unobstructed. Raamah and Ditanu only had to first push through a throng of men who had stalled at the top of the stairs to gaze up at the storm. Some of the men knew Raamah or Ditanu, or both, and they called out questioningly but received no answers as the pair quickly forced their way past.

Once inside, they made a hard right onto the stairway designated for upward traffic. It was empty save for a handful of free thinkers who evidently didn’t see a point in sticking to the rules given the circumstances. Raamah and Ditanu were able to rush nearly unimpeded up the long flights to the sixth floor, which housed Kainam’s study. This they did in less time than Ditanu would have thought possible. Nonetheless, the last two flights nearly defeated him. Using fear and stubbornness, Ditanu forced his shaking legs and burning abdomen to finish the ascent. The pair of would-be rescuers were very fit young men, but the sprint pushed their athleticism to its limits, and by the time they had reached the proper floor, they both had to stop with hands on knees to catch their breath, deadline be damned.

“My heart,” Ditanu gasped, “is knocking… a hole… through my sternum.”

“That sounds terrible,” said Raamah, his speech labored. “I only stopped… out of respect for your plight.”

“Do shut up.”

He did shut up, but with a self-satisfied smile. Moments later he was moving again, and as much as Ditanu wanted more rest, he also wanted to get out of the Tower quickly, so he followed. At that moment, they heard a muted series of cracks, and the building shook. They paused to determine whether anything else would happen, and when it didn’t, Ditanu said, “We may not be able to get down fast enough.”

“Maybe not,” Raamah said, “But I will not turn back now.”

Unfortunately, Kainam’s study was located on the opposite side of the building, due north, whereas they had come out of the southern stairwell. Every floor was laid out the same way, with a perimeter hallway encircling the whole level. Some floors contained a few rooms off the hallway, others none. The rest of the interior was solid brick—except, that is, for the center. The middle of the Tower consisted of conduits for lifts and a large, central shaft ringed by acoustic chambers every few floors. They couldn’t get across that empty central shaft, so they would have to run the hallway around the perimeter.

At least that’s what Ditanu thought until Raamah took off down the corridor that led to the heart of the Tower.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“The fastest way to Kainam is to cut through the center,” said Raamah.

“Did you learn to fly recently?”

“Perhaps!” That was all the explanation Ditanu received.

They soon arrived at the end of the corridor, where a copper door blocked the way. Raamah took hold of the crescent-shaped handle and slid the door aside, revealing an octagonal resonance chamber with no ceiling and no floor, whose surfaces were entirely covered by thin plates of silver. Ditanu knew little about the function of the shaft—only a few elders knew exactly how the device was intended to work—but it had to do with magnifying and transporting sound from the base of the Tower to its apex, where it would interact with some kind of fluid and focused sunlight.

They stepped into the room, to where the floor terminated in empty space. The gap created by the shaft was two reeds long, far too great a distance to jump across.

“What now?” asked Ditanu.

“Take your sandals off,” said Raamah as he removed his own. “Throw them to the other side.”

Ditanu did as instructed.

“See the shallow ridge where the paneling ends and the naked wall above it is recessed?” said Raamah, pointing.

“Yes, I see.”

“Grab that with your fingers,” Raamah continued. “Then put your toes on the panels that tilt upward. And keep your torso close to the wall.”

The paneled walls of the chambers were not flat, but dimensional, made up of many tilted segments arranged in geometric patterns. Raamah meant to slide along three of the segmented walls to reach the other side.

“You first,” insisted Ditanu.

“Of course,” said Raamah. He did exactly as he had described, and it worked, if only barely. Ditanu could see the muscles of his friend’s forearms straining to the maximum to keep him affixed to the wall. Raamah slid his left hand along the ledge and his left foot to the next angled surface. Once he was spread-eagle he shifted his torso over and transfered his right limbs to closer holds. He repeated this process again, more quickly, and again, until he had covered the first of the three walls.

With a deep breath, Ditanu mounted the wall as he had been shown.

“By the gods!” said Ditanu. “Now I know it is true. Before this I had only suspected you were half a madman.”

“That makes you the other half, Ditanu, because here you are, copying my every move.”

“Which only proves you to be a bad influence. But if your madness gets us through this adventure alive, I promise to retract that and call you gifted and brilliant, instead. A marvel among men!”

“Ha! Now I truly have something to live for!” joked Raamah. “Are you coming?”

Ditanu looked down and felt his pulse soar. He fought to keep calm. He didn’t fear heights, exactly, but then again, he had never hung over a chasm by little more than his fingertips. He could hardly believe what he was doing.

Down the shaft fell a cool and steady wind. It helped him. Ditanu used the sensation of the air currents to focus himself, to block out the what-ifs. Once his mind was eased, he was able to make his way across even faster than Raamah.

When he was nearly done traversing the shaft, he looked up. Far above, through the unfinished top of the Tower, he saw the bellies of evil clouds light up as jagged thunderbolts hurled themselves down from heaven. The sound of their fury echoed loudly within the shaft.

“Hurry!” said Raamah, who was already standing safely on the ledge, awaiting his companion.

Ditanu quickened his pace and soon crossed the gap. When he stepped onto the ledge, Raamah clapped him on the shoulder and handed him his sandals. “You made it look easy,” Raamah said.

“It was almost fun.”

As Ditanu went to open the door, the Tower lurched. A deafening noise assaulted them as bricks and bitumen cracked, and silver panels bent. The floor shifted to the north, causing Raamah to lose his footing, and he toppled. Backwards he fell, powerless to stop himself from becoming food in the maw of the chasm.

On instinct, Ditanu’s hand shot out and caught him by the forearm before his feet had left the floor. Ditanu’s other hand gripped the handle of the copper door like an eagle’s talon, and so he kept them both from falling. With a yank he pulled Raamah upright.

His friend’s eyes were wide with fear. “Thank you,” he said in a slightly trembling voice.

“Kush would flay me if I returned without you,” Ditanu said with a smirk.

Ditanu forcefully slid the door into its alcove, and they bolted down the corridor towards Kainam’s study. Dust falling from a ceiling suddenly askew got in their faces as they ran, but they didn’t let it slow them down. They reached the intersection of the hallways, turned, and burst through the portal to the study, nearly tripping over Kainam as they did so. He was lying on the ground, in the dark, half-covered in broken pieces of bricks. The nearest quartz-like permalight had fallen from its sconce and shattered. On the ground next to the Overseer were several leather bags stuffed with tablets and scrolls.

Raamah sighed as he looked down at the man, but Ditanu got on the ground and put his ear to Kainam’s mouth. He listened.

“I hear breathing. I think he lives.”

“Good! Take his feet, and I will take his arms. Leave the bags.”

Ditanu stood and shook his head. “Kainam’s attempt to save his library may have doomed us all,” he mused.

They scraped the rubble from Kainam’s back and hoisted him off the floor, but not before Raamah had taken a coil of rope from elsewhere in the study and slung it over his shoulders.

“Now back the way we came,” said Raamah while adjusting his grip on Kainam’s wrists.

“Not to the stairs?”

“No, we must get to the lifts.”

“The lifts will not be running any longer. Oh, you intend to make use of the lifts’ ropes, is that it?”

“Indeed it is.”

“While holding the Overseer? Is such a thing possible?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Not as such.”

“Then let’s go.”

The lifts operated within four separate conduits arrayed about the central shaft, so Raamah and Ditanu retraced their footsteps down the corridor towards that shaft, moving as quickly as they could manage while carrying a grown man. Raamah explained as they went what Ditanu should do when they reached the lift.

The building wobbled and shifted twice more before they arrived at the nearest of the four vertical passageways. The conduit housed a single lift which sat uselessly at ground level; Ditanu saw the empty wooden cage as he peered down from six floors above it. The elephant and its handler were missing. As he expected, the workers responsible for the lifts had given up their jobs and fled with their animals when the shaking began. Ditanu had the feeling that whoever remained high in the Tower would not make it down the many flights of stairs before the building crumbled around them.

Ditanu did as he was asked, holding the unconscious Kainam up behind Raamah so that he could tie the Overseer’s hands together in front of Raamah’s neck. Raamah would be choked from the dead weight, but only for as long as it took to descend. Ditanu could only hope that his friend was strong enough to maintain a controlled fall with Kainam riding on his back.

The building was now severely rocking around them. Wasting no time, Raamah leapt with his passenger into the conduit and deftly grabbed the hoist ropes. He grunted loudly as Kainam’s weight crushed his throat. A heartbeat later he was sliding down the ropes, and fast.

Ditanu waited only seconds before launching himself as Raamah had. He felt a rush of excitement and terror at a level that he had never known, even when, as a youth, he’d run from one of the great reptiles. Despite his sudden trembling, Ditanu’s hands did not fail to find one of the hoist ropes and grip it tightly, and there he was, dangling in space like a primate from a vine.

Ditanu loosened his grip enough to allow gravity to do its work, and immediately he regretted following Raamah’s lead on this. The rope was burning his hands as he fell. In seconds, the skin had been stripped from his pads and palms, leaving raw flesh. Pain lit his vision with crimson fire. He couldn’t let go, he had to keep gripping the rope to slow his descent, but it was torture. Everything in him demanded that he unhand the line.

No! Ditanu ordered himself. I will not die!

So he screamed in agony, and kept a hold, and didn’t die.

And then his feet touched the floor, and his legs flexed instinctively, but it was a hard landing and he tumbled backwards onto a jumble of broken boards. Raamah and Kainam had hit the top of the lift with too much momentum, and their combined mass had collapsed the entire cage. Now Raamah was on his elbows and knees, coughing to try and open up his crushed windpipe, while Kainam, still comatose, lie on his back beside him. Raamah had his hands open to the air, palms up, bloody and ragged. Ditanu’s own trembling hands were almost as bad; he moaned against the torment of it.

We cannot stay here, no matter the pain, Ditanu thought.

Hardening his will, Ditanu scrambled to his feet. Using his hands as little as possible, he squatted and with a loud grunt scooped up the Overseer. Legs straining, he made for the exit.

“Raamah, up with you! We must move!”

He wondered then if Raamah could move, or if perhaps his legs had broken upon impact, but the constable did indeed get up as ordered. Wordlessly, gulping air, he stumbled after Ditanu.

A great noise rose as they ran for the gate, a noise of howling winds combined with bricks sliding, breaking, crashing. In his heart, Ditanu became convinced that this was the end for them, but he pushed on nonetheless. He wasn’t going to die lying down.

Much to his surprise, they did make it alive to the gate, and through it, to the exterior walkway where men fought fierce gales to stay upright as they fled down the stairs. A gush of wind caused Ditanu to nearly tip over as he emerged from inside, but Raamah noticed and shoved him so that he regained his balance. They rushed on, flinching as bricks fell and shattered around them. Just before they reached the stairs, Raamah diverted from the escape route and went towards the nearest ramp.

“Hold there!” he yelled to Ditanu over the winds.

Ditanu did not understand, but he stopped anyway and dropped to his knees as his arm muscles gave out. He could no longer hold Kainam. Panting and limp-armed, he looked up fearfully at the Tower. Clouds of dust and debris spun furiously around the structure, making it rock like a drunkard. He saw men sucked out of the Tower and tossed about in the whirlwind, and their distant screams struck his heart.

Raamah came back carrying an empty brick-sled in his raw hands. He set the object atop the flat newel that capped one of the staircase stringers, then he picked up the limp Overseer and hauled him up, growling all the while against the pain of using his hands.

Clever, thought Ditanu as he climbed onto the sled, resigned to the fact that this fast method of escape would end in more pain.

As soon as they were seated in a row with Kainam between them, Raamah shoved off with his hands and sent the sled sliding down the stringer. The surface was steep and smooth, and their acceleration upon it sensational. Ditanu gripped tightly the sides of the sled, heedless of the pain it caused him. In very little time they had bypassed the long set of stairs and reached the newel at the bottom. They shot off the stringer at untold speed and sailed over much ground before the tip of the sled bit the earth, hurling them from the vehicle like insects flicked by a tail. Ditanu landed on his shoulder, rolled several times, and came to rest face-up on the packed dirt beside the road.

The world was dim for a fair few moments, the sounds of men running and shouting, far distant. Ditanu perceived the steady whoosh of his breath through his nostrils, and considered it strangely predominant but comforting. He didn’t want to move his aching body, but the fog in his head gradually lifted, and fear returned, and Ditanu thought it best to prop himself up to see what was happening.

His old friend, that great Tower of Babili, was slain. The whirlwind had twisted and torn it asunder, toppling it as a titan of old. It had resisted proudly but in the end was overcome, and now it crumbled under the divine onslaught. Ditanu let out a groan of anguish over the defeat, even as he savored the fact that he himself yet lived.

And how was it that he lived, being still so close to the Tower? Ditanu realized that he would survive only because the Tower was falling away from the city instead of towards it.

We are spared, thought Ditanu, confused. Why has the city been spared?

All at once it was raining bricks. The whirlwind had thoroughly disassembled the top of the Tower and scattered the pieces so that they pelted the whole land like hail. Most of the bricks had been flung away from the city, in the direction that the tower was falling, but not all of them. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Small explosions of earth marked the spots where the bricks ended their journeys. Ditanu curled up and covered his head with his arms until the deadly shower had stopped. He opened his eyes just in time to see a wall of tan clouds roll over everything.

Though he had not been crushed, he now had to survive suffocation. His fight for air began even before the noise of the collapse had ended, as the whole world became a cloud of clay dust that tried to choke the life out of him. Ditanu quickly squeezed shut his eyes against the airborne grit, but too late, his lids closing over detritus that had already coated his eyeballs. He hardly felt that particular pain, because every breath was an excruciating labor as dirt and dust and sand invaded his lungs, scraping at delicate tissues. He tried to hold his already polluted breath, but it was futile. His body instinctively gasped and, finding little air to use, violently ejected the dust so that he could gasp again, and again. As he coughed uncontrollably for minutes on end, he thought surely he would die, and he silently cursed the God who had brought this disaster. Never mind that he had not destroyed the entire city. Was the present calamity not reason enough?

But Ditanu did not die. Slowly, imperceptibly, the dust settled and the air became breathable, and his hacking subsided. He blinked over and over as his eyes watered, until finally the grit was washed out. Then, sitting up, he looked around and spotted Raamah and Kainam in a nearby patch of grass, both alive. He breathed a sigh of relief. Kainam was awake and still struggling to clear his lungs, while Raamah unfolded and examined a thick, square sheet of some kind, probably less than a cubit side to side. Something that Kainam had been carrying? Ditanu wondered.

Raamah pointed to something on the document. Ditanu faintly heard him ask, “What is this? Did you make this drawing?”

Kainam rose and tried to snatch the sheet out of his hands, but Raamah deftly kept it out of the Overseer’s reach.

“Amara na togo siyk la’shah nu!” objected Kainam in a strange tongue.

Ditanu got to his feet, watching curiously as Raamah glanced back and forth between the sheet in his hands and the unhappy Overseer. He noticed that many of those on the road were watching the drama as well, and not a few people were coming out of their homes on the outskirts of the city now that the danger had passed. Everyone around recognized Kainam, the sage of Babili, and many likely also knew Raamah, one of the threescore constables.

As Ditanu approached the two, he noticed a shift in Raamah’s eyes. A cool certainty set in, and it seemed to Ditanu that emotion had left his friend all at once. Raamah calmly folded the document and secured it in his sheepskin kilt while holding Kainam at bay. Then he kicked the man to the ground.

Ditanu froze, a sudden knot in his stomach. He watched in shock as Raamah took up a large brick that lie near at hand. His friend raised the heavy object over his head and with a strong, sure motion brought it down hard on Kainam’s skull. The Overseer’s brainpan gave way, deforming hideously, and he was dead that instant. Ditanu had never witnessed a man’s insides come out, or the disfigurement of a face that has been crushed, and at the sight of it he immediately retched.

The next several minutes were a blur. Someone attacked Raamah, and others followed. He fought back. In that moment, Ditanu was forced to make a decision: believe that there was a method to Raamah’s madness, and protect him, or cut ties and let him fend for himself.

Lifelong friendship won out. Ditanu came to his friend’s aid, and to his surprise, he was joined by those who either thought highly of Raamah or simply wanted to break up the fight. What began as a small brawl somehow spilled over into the western extents of the city, and before long almost all of Babili was fighting. As a single spark sets ablaze a vast meadow, so Raamah had ignited hell in Shinar.

There's more! Go on to chapter three.