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At the command of his father King Melchiyahu of Salem, Prince Melchizedek went to the other world to test whether men could remain loyal to an eloah with only a trace of direct contact between them.

Melchizedek took with him the Killing Relic, a weapon made by the hands of Elyon himself, that he might be protected in his quest. No weapon was remotely like it. When it was brandished, the Killing Relic bore unmistable witness that Elyon was not a mere figment like the gods that multiplied in the imagination of the men of Earth.

Melchizedek rose to the surface of Lake Tana with his supplies packaged in a clever way to keep them dry. He decanted his comestibles on the shore of the lake and moved them to a raft that he made from trees he easily felled and shaped with Killing Relic. He also had a quantity of gold on hand to trade to replenish with local goods what stock he consumed.

From the mouth of the lake it was thirty miles to the Blue Nile falls, which were sufficiently high to force Melchizedek to abandon his raft and build another one below the cataract. After that he ran the rapids of the upper Blue Nile gorge, which men have always called unrunnable.

Below the rapids, Melchizedek sat in the raft and drifted through deserts with no potable water except the river he floated on. He passed water beasts and human onlookers who dared not approach.

At length he floated into the place where the Blue Nile merged with the White Nile to become the Nile river proper. It was much warmer in this part of Earth than in Kemen and it took many days for Melchizedek to learn to put the heat in the back of his mind so he could sleep without a struggle.

In a town on the lower Nile delta Melchizedek traded his raft and some gold for camels and supplies to make an overland journey. His ultimate destination was the marshy lands far to the east were the Euphrates and Tigris rivers meandered through marshlands and silt islands before merging with the sea.

As he was commanded, Melchizedek remained alert for any man who would suit the purposes of Elyon. Rather than taking a direct path across the Empty Quarter, Melchizedek journeyed north-east through the fields and towns of Canaan and Lebanon until he reached the town of Harran where the Damascus road forked with the road to Nineveh.