3S

3S

"I already knew Joy was B'nei Elohim. There are more such Joys?"

There are more than you might imagine, Lord Belphegor. Bat-El promises all the B'nei Elohim a second life free of any obligations to him, but we find a mere two lives to be insufficient. We have contrived serial lives without end, even as you and Elyon have done, but at the cost of ongoing servitude."

"And you imagine that I can help you out of your hopeless state of affairs, so you made contact with Malphas, and he with myself."

"Milord, it seemed to us the way out is simply to take Bat-El's mind away from the obsession that compels him send us on these errands."

"And what is it that you think obsesses Bat-El?"

"Milord, not a one among the B'nei Elohim is ignorant of the ancient bargain Bat-El made with Elyon never to send an avatar to another star and make contact. But Bat-El thinks world-dwellers represent a potential loophole in that bargain."

"If you mean Bat-El intends to teach world-dwellers to reach the stars and so evade the bargain, we had guessed that in the very beginning. But perhaps Bat-El hasn't really thought it out. What would you world-dwellers actually do after arriving at one of the other suns?"

"Lord Belphegor, perhaps it will be something as simple as casting a relic into that nearby sun. A relic with a link to Bat-El like was present in Lilith's headband. A relic that would not be destroyed by the fires of that new sun because it had been forged in the center of the old sun."

Belphegor was rocked back on his heels once more as he considered what Jashen said, and he was now beginning to re-evaluate the man's worth. Of course one did not simply cast an object into a sun, one must arrest its motion and allow gravitational attraction to do the rest, but it could be done. Yes, Bat-El was planning this. He said, "You have eliminated one such relic before my eyes and you have narrated this, we guess, within the hearing of Bat-El. Yet you speak of another."

"Lord Belphegor, the other relic is a slab of stone embossed with the words of the covenant made between Bat-El and Abraham and his descendants."