Some time in 1947
Harding/De Vaux Expedition
Somewhere in the Judaean Desert
Keel Lorenz yet again used his sleeve in a desperate attempt to wipe away the desert sands that had mixed with the sweat clawing at his forehead in the blistering sunlight and heat.
The convoy had crept and crawled through the shifting sands and towers of rock on what again seemed like another blur of a day as the rag tag combination of wheeled and tracked vehicles surrounded by their keepers and tenders on foot with horse and camel made their journey towards their eventual meeting with their contact and hopefully the fruition of centuries of waiting and planning.
While the world may have stopped burning in the fires of conflict and war two years before, the majority of the men who made up the expedition where indeed armed with almost every form of man portable weapon, from pistols to rifles, machine guns and even the occasional bazooka – the vehicles themselves had been black market purchases from the spoils of war, tanks and transports from both the Allies and Axis alike had been procured by almost slight of hand for the trip, even if his fellow SELEE members had doubt in the eventual goal.
Goals within goals, organisations and cults within religions and nations – shadows moving like silk before a flame that could only be seen on the far side of a dark labyrinth of secrecy and abyssal depths.
SELEE however had finally claimed enough of their power within their respective nations with the re-building of the post-war period to start moving pieces around the world and move towards their secret and ancient goals.
Somewhere in these sandstone hills a year and a half before in a not too distant region known as the Qumran Caves a Bedouin child had been searching for a lost pet and found a cave, the cave containing the first dozen of a set of Scrolls from aeons ago.
Aeons before mankind had even come to exist – foretold in prophesy and half-legend passed through agencies in secret for a series of tasks and instructions that would one day lead mankind upon the path of gods set forth by their creators.
Athanasius Yeshue Samuel was the first to witness the scrolls and recognise them for their value as he himself had been a SELEE plant in the region from many years before and after ensuring he knew the location of the rest of the scrolls, he ensured their secrecy by having the child show him the location of the caves before allowing another SELEE planted agent to put a bullet in the child's skull and allowing the desert sands to claim the un-marked grave.
Mixed in with the ancient guides where documents in papyrus, parchment and bronze of human source and after translation they would eventually be released to the public.
The rest however and the messages within them would remain hidden until the chosen time.
What Lorenz and the others within the expedition had not expected however was that Mar Samuel would find a partial translation of the alien scripts within the human bound ones, and a prophesy about the expedition itself as it was happening. A set of instructions with codes against codes, cyphers that would somehow become apparent as the expedition set forth once again for another, second set of caves within the region that where somehow far closer and far deeper than their original destination.
Thus the expedition continued their search, not marked on any maps and following instructions older than life on earth to a sullen hollow surrounded on three sides by raised desert sandstone that led into a depression within the shifting sand and dried earth where men and industrial machines shifted mounds upon mounds aside to find the subject mentioned at the end of the translation.
The Messiah of Glass.
Keel once again attempted to wipe away the mixture of sand and sweat from his brow as he huddled over the text, every time he thought he was coming close to a translation he would scribble assorted words and even vague sentences down into his notebook, every time he blinked or looked away the words etched into the ancient stones seemed to have moved impossibly to form new patterns and a new meaning would present itself. When he had attempted to translate with another present the text would somehow only produce gibberish and what was even more incomprehensible is that every single man present would somehow have translated a completely different set of gibberish.
Yet when alone with the stones, despite their shifting and almost eldritch nature Keel somehow managed to catch glimpses of what he and his brothers had spent lifetimes working towards, what they had been handed down from generations of different cults and organisations.
"Sir! We've breached!" the cry from one of the workers broke his concentration and he looked up from the tablets and his book. He looked up to see the shifted earth had given way to an underground tunnel that the expedition had broken into from their efforts.
"Good, ver good" Keel pronounced in Germanic accented English "Prepare ze torches for ze men and ze ropes – ve vill be explorving them in vull" as he stowed his notebook and left the stones with a nearby guard. Yes, the time of prophesy really was coming to pass.
Some time later as feet touched down at the bottom of the tunnel and incandescent bulbs brought light to the long forgotten tunnel that Keel himself had joined the inspection within. He looked across to the smooth, round and gently curved walls to find that they where almost mirror smooth with no signs of brick work or carving. He was unfortunately several decades to early to have given them the description of what they really where, somehow and utterly anachronistically laser carved by hands that he may not have recognised as human.
Down one direction the walls formed together into a simple dome of a wall, permitting exploration no further. The only other path was down into the abyss.
So down they went.
Somehow from their breaking through to the surface only recently there was breathable air, none of the telltale signs of ancient sealed pockets of Methane or worse gasses. No hieroglyphics marked the walls and no other paths to be taken.
Even with the weight of destiny on his shoulders, Keel could not help but be a little shaken by the tunnel surrounding him.
After what was almost an hour of slow, walking descent into the Earth did they reach their destination and the sickly ooze of light that appeared in the distance.
Somehow the light that bled from the end of the tunnel was a mixture of ethereal blues, greens and reds that marked the edges of where the tunnel expanded to become a vast underground room or cavern.
In it's centre was a raised circular dais of un-earthly alien material that seemed to be a dark blue cross between metal and stone that was surrounded by a thick moat wider than at least three times the height of the tallest man in the group and filled with crystals of the same colour that lit the room, some blue, some red, but the vast majority where green and reflected and refracted their own sickly light from within.
Surrounding this moat was another ring of the alien metal which then descended into stairs that met with the cave floor – the alien metal and earthly stone fusing at a level where they seemed to blur together where Keel could not tell where one ended and another began, many years of research later would serve to show the two materials blending together on a molecular level.
Looking up – he could see a mirror reflection of the floor but upside down in the cave ceiling, the same dais, the same inverted moat full of crystals and the same ring that blended up into the cave roof.
In the centre of the mirrored floor and ceiling, the exact centre of the save was a cross made out of the same chrome blue metallic rock and crucified upon it was a man, stigmatised upon the cross through the wrists and ankles with thick nails of an unknown blood red material.
A bald figure in rags, who impossibly started to stir at the sounds the newcomers had made on their entrance to his prison.
"Quivkly! Bring vorth ze tunnel crozzing equivpment, ze medical suppliez and ze tranzlator!" Keel yelled back through his thick accent to the rest of the group as the assorted mercenaries and explorers sent cries back to the rest of the main group above the ground.
With the two virtues of both destination and purpose groups of men returned with a series of wooden and metal ladders, a Gurney and medics alongside them and a dark skinned Arabian mercenary who was the only other translator for the expedition.
The ladders where assembled and lifted across the outer ring, and with the exertions of strength from Keel and the group it eventually met the other side of the moat and the first men made their way across.
As they moved with a cautious pace into the centre of the dais they saw the figure closely now with no bleeding or scarring from the stigmata through his flesh.
"Remove ze core material carevully" Keel said aloud as he recognised the blood red material for what it truly was "And touch it not vith your skin, uze glovez or toolz only"
Although many of the men within the core group where either members of SELEE themselves or close enough aligned to know the dangers of touching core material with their bare hands, it was still decades to early to know what LCL was yet despite the fact that skin contact with the material would reduce them too it.
Further adding mystery and danger to this Messiah of Glass.
As time passed the first of the bolt like nails of core material was removed and the figure crucified upon the cross started to regain his strength, the wounds inflicted an unknown time before healing of their own accord as the SELEE workers removed the nails and placed them within a nearby case for later analysis.
Which was when the figure started to utter his first words.
Keel grabbed the other translator by the shoulder and shoved him towards the figure.
"Tranzlate. Now." He growled with finality in his tone.
The words where archaic, chunks of tongues that eventually become other languages from both the ancient and modern world but as the second and third bolts where removed the man regained his strength further and hints of a meaning began to emerge.
"He says . . . " The Arabian translator began "Touch not the core material . . . nor the crystals . . . both are prisons which will . . . rend the soul?"
"And anything elze?" Keel replied.
"One other thing . . . " The Arabian man edged in closer to listen as the final nail was removed and the crucified man dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, the flesh from the wound closing as he took his first breaths of freedom in untold ages.
"He says . . . " The translator moved down " . . . he says . . . "
The figure moved suddenly and violently, both grabbing the Arabian man by the throat and rising to his feet at the same time.
Keel and the men surrounding them moved back, some rifles raised and clacked was their safeties where turned off but with a raise of the hand from Keel they where lowered once again as the figure in rags tested his strength.
As his grip tightened around the mercenary translators throat his power was slowly returning through him, coursing back into his veins as both knowledge and meaning was sapped through the veins and soul of the man and into him.
"He says" Kane stated aloud with renewed vigour and in perfect English "You cannot kill the messiah"
For the first time since his imprisonment Kane allowed himself a smile which was far closer to a demented, evil grin. Keel watched as Kane continued to walk to the edge of the dais and stood with the other man held aloft over the other, alien material in the room and released his grip.
The Arabic man dropped and was impaled upon the crystal formations which the rest of the world would not see for another 50 years, the alien horror which would eventually be named "Tiberium" as the dais and ring began to glow with an ethereal and eldritch non-light as the man who was originally impaled was suddenly devoured by the crystal growths which at a pace far faster than otherwise natural broke through his skin, carried by the dying man's blood and bone as his flesh suddenly sloughed away and his entire being was infused with and then replaced by the plight below.
With the man dead, Kane allowed his arm to drop and turned to face the SELEE group at last.
"Come my brothers" he said aloud to the combined men as a whole "It is time to renew . . . and rebuild . . . the brotherhood of Nod"
Groups within groups, shadows within shadows Keel thought as together SELEE and the Messiah of Glass began the first steps towads their ascension.
A moment from Scythe himself
Hokay – so I'm starting up a second fanfic idea whilst I'm still trying to make my way through Of Avatars and Harbingers (Don't worry I haven't forgotten about it, but writers block is a git I am currently trying to kill).
As far as I'm aware a Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn/ Tiberian Sun and Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover has not been attempted yet (The only other one seems to be a post Third Tiberian war and Rebuild 3.0 story which hasn't been expanded on yet) so I'm looking forward to diving into the depths of world building and expanding on ideas like I did with Avatars and Harbingers and hopefully the combined change of writing style and setting should give enough leway with the writers block on both projects.
Anywho – more will be on the way shortly so until then, enjoy this first chapter and as always -
Tarrah for now.