Events taking place before the creation of Eden.
The Pleroma, the city of Jasper walls that turned gold into glass, was the home of all the Aeons over the constellation of Orion, but now Sophia only looked back at it with beads of sweat on her forehead.
Guards were hot on her trail, and she needed to cross the twelve gates out of her home.
Each of them was made of mother-of-pearl, resistant to acids and heat, but not to the light in each of Sophia's slap of one hand. She broke the first one, and it took her into the diluted, red-stained world of a Sardonyx. Its waves armed her with courage and dried the tears on her face. All the Aeons elders hated her; they had to, because otherwise, why would they choose not to help her conceive a child for no reason?
Without her, they would be nothing but lost souls in a kingdom of ruin.
Sophia blasted through Carnelian, Chrysolite, Beryl, Topaz, Chrysoprase, Jacinth, and more, and even the Amethyst gate couldn't stop her wrath. Nothing could halt it after they downgraded her to the lowest rank of them all. This was now all the past; they all knew she had betrayed them to pursue her utopia of a fairer world.
There was no way back from this; she would be a criminal from now on.
In her light, silky white dress, Sophia was their wisdom, the same power bestowed on each king and ruler to govern. Yet she was there at the edge of the last gate with her bag of stolen goods at her waist—all the Aeons' wealth—their infinite crystals of soul and the portal to a heavenly kingdom that none of them knew existed, just right before her.
She didn't think twice before stepping into it, and she fell over the grass floor of her secret paradise, becoming the mother to all the living.
She was the wisdom that built what would be known as Eden.
Yet she wasn't on her own in this toil as he laid the foundations of the universe for her to place the stars of her firmament on it. He was Yaldaboath, an engineer, one of the best geneticists, a banished Archon, and currently a warlord from the constellations of Sirius. And he just landed his spacecraft over the virgin land of Sophia, right in this instant.
Violent winds blew over the slight frame of Sophia at his arrival, causing her to raise a hand to cover her face as she stood up. She recoiled, not by the size of his vehicle, but as he, Yaldaboath, approached her. Fear pounded on her chest, with each of his heavy footsteps making her heart beat stronger than the last one until he removed his hood. The Archon was a distant and near-extinction race in comparison to the beautiful Aeon, a tribe of blue-fleshed and red-haired beings. Yaldaboath was no different from what Sophia knew of them; only the many dreadful white battle scars all over his body set him apart from the others.
"It's a beautiful place you created there, Sophia!"
This was the first thing he said to her in his deep voice, and somehow she felt compelled to bow her head to him. The towering Yaldaboath, with his broad shoulders, square jawline, and long hair wrapped into a bun over his head, only smirked at her gesture.
"Like I said in our many exchanges, we are equal, so we don't need those formalities between us."
She answered him with a curt nod before impatience itched her. "Can we see them now?"
"Can we see what?"
"The shells for all the souls in my possession." In this declaration, Sophia opened the bag tucked into the folds of her dress. A rainbow shimmered over Yaldaboath's grey face—the thousand lumens from all the crystals ever created by the Aeons.
"Of course, let's go to the room full of soulless bodies." Yaldaboath motioned for her to follow him as he walked ahead, leading the way into his humble abode. Sophia looked up. The spacecraft was a tall black tower of at least twenty metres in height—a monster-sized shadow to his owner. It scanned Eden with its many neon-lit eyes perched on its one leg—the anchor foot claiming a share of land in Sophia's new world. The ship served as an amplifier for Sophia's doubt over Yaldaboath's actual intention.
Was she right to call on ignorance to fight her battle against Pleroma?
"I hope your kind has wings."
Sophia chortled with a pain stuck at the back of her throat. There was no way back from this. "All of them do, but not me."
"It's alright; they had probably deprived this right from you too." Yaldaboath suddenly wrapped his strong arms around her body, tightening his grip and crimson gaze over the bag of souls at her waist, and they both flew on his wings to the top floor of his home.
Bright white light blasted on as their feet landed at its doorsteps. Rows after rows of circular pods illuminated one by one, but only ten of them contained something inside. They were ten fully grown foetuses lost in a myriad of black tubes that injected them with nutrients as well as water to flush over their frail bodies from their own waste.
The complex machinery engineered to replace one female's organ to grow a child.
At their only sight, Sophia stretched out her hand to rest over their glass artificial womb, tears bursting out of her eyes. They were all so magnificent and pure.
Her head then turned to her acolyte. "Yaldaboath, I wanted to say sorry to you for my husband's behaviour. Lucifer didn't have the right to publicly shame you over our ideas. We might not agree with each other, but what he did to you was not right."
Yaldaboath simply gave a single, gloomy snort from across the room. "Thanks," he said as he moved closer to her and touched a button on a control to send a pod forward to face Sophia. As it got closer, her joined hands pressed over her mouth, joy swirling within her into a strong whirlpool. The tiny being within had all her features, including a button nose, terracotta complexion, and the plumpest of cheeks.
A smile, too, broke Yaldaboath's stoic demeanour at Sophia's happiness. "It doesn't matter now, as we will create together a better world than the Pleroma without his help or any of the Aeons' help. You did what was right by stealing those crystals from them."
His words caused Sophia to throw herself into his arms. "Thank you, Yaldaboath; he is beautiful." With a sigh, her voice faltered even more from the weight of her gratitude. "My Adam is beautiful."
"They will regret having made you the lowest of all the Aeons, Sophia." Yaldaboath took her hand and pressed a kiss on it. "You're so much more than what they said."
The compliment rewarded him with another of her smiles, but she was not the only one expecting a child from this. "Where is yours?" Her eyes gleamed with excitement. "Where are your almighty warrior and his army?"
Yaldaboath gave his head a scratch and then pushed a second button to bring his pod forward. His child, to the contrary to the one from Sophia or unlike himself or anybody else, possessed ashen skin. Only his bright red hair made them related.
"The only one of all my new Archon breeds." A satisfied grin now crowned his face as he continued. "My one and almighty son."
"He is beautiful!"
"He is not!" Yaldaboath bellowed before throwing his most distasteful glare over the smaller Sophia at her remark. She only curled her shoulders, making herself smaller in his presence. "He is deadly!" A booming laugh echoed out of his mouth in this moment as he carried on. "Only he can kill me, but I'll make sure this will never happen!" He then stretched out his palm towards her. "Now give me one of your crystals for him!"
Sophia nodded her head and opened her pouch to search for one of them. "What about the eight others behind?" She pointed her finger at the remaining ones, for whom nothing set them apart but branded symbols on each part of their body.
"What about them?"
"Don't they deserve a soul, too?"
"As generals to my future army, they don't need a soul; they are incomplete for the sole purpose of better serving me and my son!"
Sophia's lips flattened at his answer, while she finally retrieved the right crystal for Yaldaboath's offspring. A blood-red-coloured gemstone that enhanced confidence, and he just snatched it from her hands. "Alright, that's yours; red ruby like your hair!"
"Whatever that shit means!"
"And one white opal for mine!" She muttered in a humming tone that displayed all the rays of hope for her child. Lucifer and she were the only ones from the Aeons who couldn't conceive of a being of their own. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was punishment, but she found hope in Yaldaboath's forbidden project to become a mother.
Together, Yaldaboath, wearing a frozen expression, and Sophia, beaming broadly, put their crystal into a slot on the left side of their future offspring's pod. Their amniotic fluid took the hue of their souls until the sounds of two infant's cries resounded. The water emptied itself from the pod along with its glass shell. Sophia took hold of Adam with the utmost care and even let out a few tears and kisses all over his frail body.
He was the most precious to her.
But not Yaldaboath. He slammed a button on the control panel, flooding his progeny back into the red amniotic fluid that smothered his weeping.
"She is a girl!" He grumbled, anger grating the tone of his voice, causing Sophia to hold her son closer to her chest. His outburst didn't cease there, as he walked behind their two pods to examine the other eight remaining ones. "All boys!"
Adam suddenly cried louder into Sophia's arms, and she rocked him the best she could. "Yal, she will be perfect to lead an army and fight your many wars around the galaxies!"
Yaldaboath stepped back, his hand gushing blood as he punched on a wall. Then he turned to face Sophia again, his red eyes blazing with menace.
"A woman, really?"
Her chin quivered, but Sophia took courage and put her son back into his pod, covering him with his amniotic fluid. She kissed her hand, then pressed it against his glass shell.
Flaring his nostrils, Yaldaboath growled again. "Please get all her demonic power out of her!"
"Are you sure of this?"
Her questions poured oil over his smouldering wrath, and he yelled at her. "Would you just do what I fucking tell you for once in your life?"
Sophia let out a yelp.
Taking a deep breath, Yaldaboath stepped back from her and rubbed his hands over his face. "I'm sorry, Sophia; I didn't mean what I said. Of course, a woman can lead an army. I just have so much hope for a son, my own son."
Yaldaboath cried, pushing his body against a wall to miserably collapse on himself. Sophia didn't need more to take his daughter out of her pod. She wrapped her tiny fists around Sophia's clothes, begging her for a kiss. Tears erupted on Sophia's face at this moment. She felt the power of this child travelling through her; she was strong—too strong to even be born—and it was with bitterness that she pressed her hand over the newborn's back. One single touch of her hand sucked out all her demonic power, leaving her with the plain eyes of Adam.
"There, it's done!" She said this as she put the baby back into his pod. "You shouldn't be sad, Yal; a child is a gift!"
Yaldaboath shook his head. "You know, I had so much trouble with my female kind. Those evil creatures who have the luxury to choose with whoever they want to give pleasure and to procreate as if my species is not already a dying one. History won't remember us because of their selfishness. They should not have this power over us; those who know should make for them this decision as only them know what genes could save my kind from our current plague."
As Yaldaboath raved in his speech, Sophia locked an empty gaze at a tiny, chopped arm behind the latter. The limb that grew into the full shape of dead female newborns—this was not his first attempt. Fear seeped in her bone and clattered her teeth, striking her harder upon the discovery of other unanimated female body parts of his species sliced up with one of them staring back at her lifeless. Her breath suddenly accelerated, and many thoughts rushed into her mind.
What had she done to the Aeons?
"I had no regret in butchering any of them for the good of our creation, Sophia. They rob us so much, and I'll prove we can't create another being without them, which is why I've created this machine. I wanted my own son, so I don't need to become one of their slaves."
Yaldaboath was no specialist, no magician, but a fraud. All his masterpieces were made of murder, and as realisation dawned on her, Sophia jolted. Yaldaboath was standing up, his hands clenched around her arms from behind.
"Sophia, you do understand me, right? You understand that my hatred for them is the same as the feelings you felt towards the Aeons who rejected you because of your infertility? They are all the same evil creatures who had too much power in their own hands to control others."
At each of his intonations and at each of his words, he drew out fears from her. Every hair on her body raised, and her discomfort didn't ease when she felt him hovering over her ears. His breath turned her flesh frostbite as he whispered, "I hate the thought that they rejected you for something you couldn't change about yourself, punishing you for just being a dreamer like me."
Turning her around, Yaldaboath pressed Sophia up against a wall, bringing his lips down to hers. "Yal, I'm married; you remembered?" She begged, but her plea fell on deaf against his will as he just tucked one strand of her brown hair behind her ear as if he took possession of her body.
"And so you ran away from Lucifer and came to this place for me, right?"
Sophia cracked under his pressure. The bubbles that rose from her stomach burst as tears streamed down her now pale face. "No, I came to you because I had hope to create a better world where everybody will have an equal chance to conceive a child!"
His hands loosened his grip on her, freeing her as he sneered at her with disgust. Sophia knew it all now; Yaldaboath had made use of her weakness—her hopelessness—to ever hold a child of her own to his advantage. With nothing left to lose, she shoved him back to flee from him, blasting a new light from the slap of her hand against his body, but it only bounced back from his dark cloak.
The corner of his nasty grin tucked up while she clutched the bag of souls in her possession. With what felt like her final breath, she cast a glance at the imprisoned Adam in his pod—the child she would never have. Sophia then ran through his maze of a home, light spilling into each room she found shelter in.
This was a nightmare with no escape.
In her last turn, a pair of unseen hands suddenly pulled her into the obscurity. His crimson eyes glowed in the likeness of those belonging to Yaldaboath, except he wasn't the latter, but an armoured man in his likeness, hung on a hook against a wall.
"Help!" He gasped. "Yaldaboath had turned mad; he slaughtered all eight of his generals to take their DNA to create a newer and more loyal breed to his will." With floods in his eyes, dread overtook him as he drew her closer to him. "You need to get out of here; you need to get me out of here!"
The tip of a fiery sword suddenly pierced his chest, leaving a rose quartz to fall into Sophia's palm as the man's hand dropped lifelessly. Now, directly behind the deadman, Yaldaboath's visage emerged, his smile widening at the sight of his next victim.
Sophia lashed out a loud scream before rushing away from him again. Seeing no way out of his stubbornness and madness, she gave him one last look of despair before jumping down from his abode and back into Eden.
The air was free—a warm embrace on her body helped her descend, yet she fell straight on her right shoulder. And even on her belly and eating dust, he was still behind her, forcing her to crawl for her own life.
Sophia could hear Yaldaboath's threat growing louder around her, his disembodied voice numbing the pain of her fresh wound.
She needed to escape to save Adam.
"You're all the same, using us for your own good and not wanting us when we offered ourselves to you," Yaldaboath then yelled louder. "Sophia, get back here, or I'll swear your son will procreate an army for me to crush your beloved Pleroma; I'll kill every and each one of the Aeons until the last one because of your betrayal!"
It was an unexpected thought, a mad solution, but Sophia stretched out her arms towards a tree, merging her soul and body with it. From there, she cried invisible tears and screamed in silenced sorrow as her branches grew out, fruits filled with the truth that her tongue could no longer tell. And they called her "the forbidden tree of knowledge."