CRUSADES AND CULTS
The Incursion was disastrous for humanity, in more ways than one. The most obvious consequence was the sheer physical damage, of course—demons wiped out whole villages, burned crops, turned brothers against one another.
But the more extensive damage lay in humanity’s response to the threat. The presence of demons gave rise to apocalyptic cults that disrupted the normal structures of life and religion. Some cults were demon-worshippers, hoping to be spared by their conquerors. Other cults tried to band together to fight the demons, usually bringing destruction upon themselves and anyone unlucky enough to be close by. These cults spread fear and chaos where they went.
Worse, perhaps, than isolated apocalyptic cults was the larger political response. Christian Europe decided that the demons were spreading over their lands because their Holy Land of Jerusalem was not in Christian hands, and declared the first Crusades in order to get it back. Thus, rather than turning their attention to the immediate demonic threat, the Islamic Near East and the Christian West entered a long series of bloody wars and recriminations that, if anything, only helped the demons spread mayhem and death.
JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER
The Crusades soon became a popular career path for young men of Europe seeking their fortune and name in battle. It was an opportunity for renown. Some, like Jonathan Shadowhunter, were younger sons of nobles and would not inherit their family’s fortune. Jonathan felt pulled to battle because of honor and duty, surely, but the Crusades also were one of the few avenues available to him.
Unfortunately, the man Jonathan is something of an enigma to us today. We know little of his life before the Nephilim and even less of his childhood or family of origin. (A medieval tradition tells us that he was the seventh son of a seventh son, but no evidence of this exists.) We know that his family were wealthy landowners but he would inherit nothing from them.
Of the fateful trip that changed his life and our whole world, we know that Jonathan was on his way to Constantinople to join the European forces mustering there. He traveled not alone but with two companions: David, his closest friend, who hoped to join the Crusade not as a soldier but as a medic; and Abigail, Jonathan’s elder sister, bound too for Constantinople, not to fight but to join the man to whom she was betrothed. (Of this doomed fiancé no knowledge remains, except that Jonathan was unhappy with the match and often spoke about his pleasure at Abigail remaining with him rather than wasting away “in some tiny hamlet on the Black Sea.”)
A NOTE ON JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER’S ORIGINS
While the story of the creation of the Nephilim is one that has been told and retold continually since that creation, there are several key details of Jonathan Shadowhunter himself that are, frustratingly, lost to history. His home prior to his encounter with Raziel is known only to be somewhere in central, northern, or western Europe, because at the time his journey was interrupted. David reports that their party was traveling east. Over the course of history almost every nation has made a claim as the home of Jonathan Shadowhunter; there was a powerful faction in the eighteenth century that believed him to have been a massive Icelandic warrior, for instance, though we now believe that theory is somewhat far-fetched.
A DREAM OF SHADOWS
Our only direct report from the group that beheld Raziel comes from translations of accounts supposedly written by David. It’s not known whether he wrote these accounts as they were happening or wrote them as memoirs later in his life. They are, however, the closest we can come to the truth.
In his notes David relates a conversation that, he says, took place the night before the creation of the Nephilim. The three travelers were camped in the forest. Several days before, they had met and fought a small lone demon on the road. They did manage to chase it off, but not without Jonathan suffering a deep, dangerous wound in his right arm. The wound was thickly bandaged, and Jonathan held his arm immobilized in a sling, but then, by the light of a small, almost smokeless fire, he unwrapped the bandages from his arm, and he said to his companions, “This cut is deep and long. The demons have put such a wound into the flesh of the world itself, which can be bandaged, but under the bandages it will not heal.”
Abigail agreed that this was true, but that the three of them, young and inexperienced, had little power to help. David remained silent, as was his preference, staring into the fire and considering.
Jonathan continued, “It does not work simply to kill demons. They damage the world by their very presence. They must be eliminated, the wound of the world bound and dressed so that it might begin to heal.”
He told them of a dream: “On the night that I pledged my sword to the Crusades,” he said, “I dreamed I stood in blazing sunlight, golden like the light of heaven, and my sword shone so that I myself was blinded. On the night my arm suffered this scratch, I dreamed differently. I had realized that the demons I sought would not come to me, in the light. They remained safe in darkness, and their power lay in keeping their secrets.
“In this dream I still held my sword, but it did not shine. Instead I crept through the shadows, which embraced me like a child. The shadows became not the demons’ ally but mine. When I struck with my sword, it was with silence and speed, and none but myself and the demon knew what had transpired.”
We cannot know whether the events that led to the creation of the Nephilim were destined, or were manipulated into place by Heaven, or just arose by chance. Whether the world would have been destroyed without Jonathan Shadowhunter, or whether some other leader would have arisen, is a matter for speculation. The fact is that in the hour of greatest need, Jonathan Shadowhunter did rise up and become that leader.
LAKE LYN
The next day (according to David), the party’s travels took them to Lake Lyn, in the mountains of Central Europe. The lake was not the glittering blue of today but a black roiling tear in the fabric of the world through which demons passed back and forth freely. Jonathan, David, and Abigail were attacked there by a swarm of demons, of some species we can’t now identify. (There are a few possibilities supported by different scholars, but all we have is David’s description—“very large, like a bat and a shadow, an eagle and a serpent, that towered over us like a thunderstorm.” Idiots. Obviously it was a swarm of Serpent-eagle Thundershadowbats.
Suuuuuuure
The party fought the demons back as best they could, but Jonathan was already wounded, and neither Abigail nor David possessed great physical strength. David tells us that Jonathan threw off his sling and bandages and fought valiantly through the pain. They held the demons off from killing them, but were overwhelmed. Finally the demons took all three into the lake, to drown them.
Fighting against his fate, Jonathan used what little breath he had to ask a blessing on the lake, to sanctify it as a place where things of evil, such as these demons, would not be welcome. He prayed, and his prayer was answered.
RAZIEL AND THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS
And Raziel rose from the lake, bearing with him the Mortal Instruments. All action ceased. Even the demonic energies of the tear in the world seemed to stop. In the forests surrounding them, birds quit their singing.
Raziel spoke, saying, Be not afraid.
I am an angel of the Lord come unto you, Jonathan. You have called me and I have come.
Jonathan said, “Please, save my friends.”
We cannot blame Jonathan for not asking Raziel for a greater gift; indeed it is admirable that in such a moment he would think first of the lives of his companions.
Raziel lifted Jonathan, David, and Abigail from the lake and placed them on the shore. The Angel’s figure was human, but so large that he could cradle the three mortals easily in his palms.
Then he lifted his arms, and with a single great motion he flung the remaining demons high into the air. Jonathan watched them rise and rise, eventually fading to pinpricks that vanished against the stars. Then Raziel turned his gaze back to Jonathan. I know your dream, he said. Raziel threw them INTO SPACE. Awesome.
Jonathan was struck silent. He looked to his friends, and saw that they were not conscious but were breathing.
On the banks of the lake, Raziel placed the Cup, the Sword, and the Mirror, and told Jonathan each of their functions. Beside them he placed his Book, and he told Jonathan the function of this as well. With his finger he gently inscribed across the wound in Jonathan’s arm the first iratze seen on Earth. Jonathan watched in awe as his flesh again became unbroken, as if the natural order of the world briefly moved backward, and the pain of the injury subsided. He bowed his head and gave thanks. Then Raziel lifted the Cup and in it he mixed his angelic blood and the blood of Jonathan, and he said: In your dream you saw a great truth—that to destroy the things of darkness, it is sometimes necessary to descend into the shadows to join them. You shall bring men and women into the darkness with you, and you will master the shadows, and you will hunt.
From now until the end of the world,
You shall be called Jonathan Shadowhunter
For you and your kin will drive the shadows of the world away
And you will make light in dark places
And you will be called Nephilim, as it says in the book of Genesis:
“The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them: the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.”
For you will be of men and yet you will be of angels; both in one.
Raziel seemed less annoyed with everybody back then.
Dealing with humans for the last thousand years probably hasn’t helped his mood.
IDRIS
The Angel Raziel, in his generosity, had two more gifts for Jonathan Shadowhunter.
The first was the gift of adamas, the heavenly crystal that glowed with heavenly fire, that could not be cut or carved by mundane means, and the secrets of whose working could be found only in the Gray Book. Demons will recoil from its power, said Raziel. It shall be the metal of the Nephilim forevermore, however much is needed. And he presented to Jonathan a polished branch of adamas, the first stele. With this will you draw the sigils of Heaven.
Then he raised his hands, and from the ground came spires and towers, many times the height of a man, spiked and yearning toward the sky. From many places on the plain they came, and when they had all grown, Raziel led these first Nephilim to a spot in the midst of the towers, where four smaller towers stood describing a diamond, and there he gave them the second gift, the gift of Idris.
This shall be your country, he said. A haven for all the Nephilim and those who beat against the shadows of this world. He described the wards he had created, and the safety they promised. And then he began to rise back toward Heaven. Now never contact me again, he said.
Legend tells us that then Jonathan Shadowhunter cried out in a moment of human weakness, asking Raziel how he could be called if the need became too great for mortals to bear. And Raziel answered him that he had given all he could, the many gifts of Heaven: the Cup, the Sword, the Mirror, the Gray Book, the adamas, the land of Idris. He could give no more. This mission, he said, must be the mission of men. But then he relented, and his sternness briefly faded, and he said, If you again find yourself in true need—true need—of me, take the Cup, the Sword, the Mirror—these Mortal Instruments—and summon me by the shores of the lake.
And then he departed.
But seriously, never call me.