Beliar, the Adversary Whose Drawn Sword Will Finally Bow

Before the first sword was forged, a sword was already drawn. It hung in the unseen places of the world, and the hand that held it belonged to Beliar, the spirit of lawlessness, woven into the fabric of things the way rot is woven into fruit that has begun to soften.

He did not need to recruit. He needed only to wait at the door of every heart and watch which way it leaned.

The Sword That Was the Mother of Seven Evils

Beliar's blade was not a single edge. It was a brood. From it came bloodshed, and from bloodshed came corruptness, and from corruptness came error, and from error came captivity, and from captivity came hunger, and from hunger came panic, and from panic came devastation. Seven evils, each one giving birth to the next, a chain of harm that began with a single yielding.

Whoever obeyed him fed the blade. The sword was drawn, the old warning went, to slay all that pay him obedience. A man would lift his hand against his brother and call it justice. He would take what was not his and call it craft. He would forsake the straight road and never feel the turn, because Beliar's work was quiet until the moment it was complete.

"Flee before the malice of Beliar," the fathers told their sons, and they did not say it gently. They had seen the seven evils walk one behind the other through a household until nothing was left standing.

The Angel Who Guides the Righteous Soul

But the spirit of lawlessness did not rule every soul. Against him stood the angel of peace, and where that angel walked, Beliar's tempting hand found no purchase.

The good man was the proof. His inclination did not lie in the power of the tempter spirit, for the angel of peace guided his soul, and the man went on doing good in a world that gave him every reason to stop. He had no envious eye. He looked on sinners, even on the ones whose evil designs were aimed straight at him, and he answered them with mercy. He met the drawn sword with an open hand, and by his good deeds he conquered the evil, because it had been ordained so by God.

"My children," the dying patriarch said to those gathered at his bed, "have you observed the mercy of the good man? Imitate it with pure intention, that ye, too, may wear crowns of glory."

This was no small promise. The unclean spirits departed from such a man. The wild beasts stood in fear of him. Where Beliar's seven evils bred and multiplied, the tzaddik's single mercy undid them, one by one, and the peace that followed him was the angel's own.

Cain, the First to Carry the Sword

There was a face for what obedience to Beliar made of a man, and the fathers named it. They named Cain.

He had lifted his hand against Abel, his righteous brother, and the blood had cried up from the ground. For that, God surrendered him to seven punishments, one for each of the evils his sword had loosed into the world. Once in a hundred years the Lord brought a castigation upon him. His afflictions began when he was two hundred years old, and they did not relent. Century after century the blow came, until his nine hundredth year, when the waters of the deluge rose and destroyed him at last, for having slain his righteous brother.

And the warning did not end with one man's bones. Those who are like unto Cain, the fathers said, will be chastised forever with the same punishments as his. The sword of seven evils does not lay itself down. It is handed, edge first, from one obedient hand to the next.

The Latter Time, When the Children Forget

The patriarch lifted himself once more and spoke of a thing that had not yet happened, of his own descendants in a time far past his death.

"Know, my children," he said, and the room went still. He saw them in the latter time forsaking what was right. They would let go of rectitude and take up craft. They would turn from the commands of the Lord and follow another, and the one they followed would be Beliar, lawlessness given a name. They would give up husbandry and abandon the land and the quiet life that grew from it, and chase their own evil plans instead. For this they would be scattered among the heathen and made to serve their enemies, exiles in a country not their own.

It was a grim sight, and the old man did not soften it. The seven evils he had named at his sons' bedside would come for their children's children, and the sword would still be drawn.

The Return No Sword Could Stop

But the patriarch did not close his mouth on ruin. He had one more thing to say, and he made his sons swear to carry it.

"Tell this unto your children," he commanded, "so that, if they sin, they may repent speedily, and return to the Lord." Because the Lord was merciful. However far they were scattered, however deep into Beliar's country they wandered, God would take them out and bring them back unto their land. The exile had an end written into it from the start.

And here the oldest hope of all was spoken. There would come a future age of collapse and fire and judgment, a settling of every account the seven evils had ever opened. In that age even Beliar himself, the spirit woven into the fabric of the world, the hand that had held the drawn sword since before swords existed, would be undone. The adversary who would burn would, at the very end, bow. Beliar would return to God.

The patriarch lay back. The sword was still drawn somewhere in the dark of the world. But now his sons knew that even it had a last day coming, and a knee that would bend.