The Watchers

Before the Flood, two hundred angels set to watch over humankind looked down, desired, and descended on Mount Hermon — binding themselves by mutual curses so that no one of them could repent without betraying the rest.

They took wives and paid in knowledge heaven had withheld: Azazel taught the sword and the shield and the ornaments of desire; others taught sorcery, root-cutting, and the reading of stars. Their children were the Nephilim, giants whose hunger consumed the world that bore them, until the earth itself cried out to heaven.

The Watchers begged Enoch, the scribe who walked with God, to write their petition for mercy. Heaven refused it in one line — "You should intercede for men, and not men for you" — and sent him back carrying their verdict.

Azazel was bound in darkness under the desert; the giants were set against each other; the Flood wiped the page. But the spirits of the drowned giants were left to walk the earth — the demons of every later scripture, orphans of Mount Hermon. The fathers wait under the hills. The children walk.