Archon(72)

“. . . Raziel, who cared for them both, found himself acting as an intermediary. And so, the first step toward disaster occurred after his brief but unexpected absence. With Raziel gone, the civility he’d nurtured disintegrated rapidly. And by the time he reappeared, Heaven’s loyalties had been split in two. To be honest . . . a great many of us found Lucifel unapproachable, her ideas too heretical—and against Israfel’s powerful charisma she might have stood little chance. But he had changed after Raziel’s return . . . And when Israfel’s confident behavior faltered, so did the trust of thousands . . .”

One alone gazed at Lucifel with pity.

Angela herself.

Or rather, an angel with Angela’s large blue eyes and deep red hair. He was dressed in a coat of midnight blue, its silver embroidery seeming to be made of light plucked from the heavens, and jewels that resembled stars swept beneath his brow line and up onto the mysterious wings that were also his ears. His pinions were larger than Israfel’s and Lucifel’s, a beautiful blood red, and the stiff feathers over his wing bones drooped heavily beneath silver cuffs.

Gentleness shone in his expression, and he glanced from Israfel to Lucifel and back again with a sad premonition in his smile. Wiser than either of them, he seemed to know that his affection could never mend the hatred that was darkening Heaven.

This was the Preserver Supernal, and Angela felt all his stability and reassurance, relaxed in the blessing of his presence.

Until he did the unthinkable and flew from his throne, diving into the abyss . . .

“The situation only grew worse from there . . . for very soon afterward, Lucifel was found pregnant with Raziel’s chicks, and mating is forbidden between male and female angels, let alone siblings, unless the union   has been approved. As you can imagine, Israfel did not take the news well. Not only had Lucifel betrayed his crown, she’d taken a brother away from him. And Raziel, by all appearances, had picked his ultimate side . . .”

Then a great horror appeared in Heaven: Lucifel, sweeping her Glaive—a dreadful weapon that seemed made more of blood than iron—and the stars blinking away into darkness beneath her lack of compassion. She walked among angels of all descriptions and genders, perfect or deformed, and those who refused to bow to her blade were cut down ruthlessly. Behind her, amid a sky that was green with evil storms and also black with their clouds, great serpents twisted through the ether, clearing vast flocks of angels with their fearsome jaws.

The vision was familiar and yet terribly alien, as Tileaf had warned, and Angela found relief again only when the scene changed to that of the Destroyer Supernal, gazing down at the blood she had so wantonly spilled. Completely unsympathetic . . .

Utterly vanquished inside.

“It was the Celestial Revolution. The chicks—it was long said—had been torn from Lucifel’s body and aborted, and rather than suffer any more punishment or humiliation, she’d summoned the cult that worshipped her to rebellion. An infamous rebellion . . . and also the beginning of Raziel’s final hours. The battle was reaching its climax when he crossed the bridge to Ialdaboth, the highest dimension of Heaven, to speak with God, presumably about an end to what Raziel termed a useless battle . . .

The verdict must have driven him mad . . .”

Now, a scene of almost unimaginable bloodshed.

Angels tearing down other angels with energy and ether and weapons that glittered like crystal but cut with the cruelty of ice. They tumbled and screamed in agony, feathers falling throughout Heaven like snow, and behind them, plummeting from a bridge that rose to the spire of the material universe, its gables made of pearlescent glass—Raziel, his face blank with terror and pain.

His wings were shredded. They were no more than rags spewing blood.

And that meant the end.

It was over, as if someone had flipped a switch, as every combatant paused to watch one of the Supernals die . . .

It was over.

“Lucifel had lost the war. And Raziel, it was commonly agreed, had committed suicide rather than subject himself to the punishment of God . . .”

Darkness came over all of Heaven. Lucifel and her flock of dissenters, descending like a living smoke, down and down and down . . .

“For with her lover dead and the war decided, she fled to Hell . . . piercing it all the way to the Abyss, where the demonic regime continues to this very day. Her name is hateful to the angels, and every one of her supporters, including Raziel, shares that legacy. All his belongings and writings were destroyed, and among them was his greatest work—”

The Book of Raziel.

Reality shifted and Angela was suddenly out of Tileaf’s memories, standing in a space where she could walk, talk, and breathe, her consciousness now separated from the Fae’s by a renewed sense of individuality. In this place, she had will and sensation, but for a short time, the strangeness of what she had just seen, that sense of the alien, curled her into a ball of terror and pain. She merely lay there, in the blackness that was enough to give her existence, seeing nothing but Lucifel’s face and Israfel’s beauty, and the immense starlit perfection of Heaven spattered with their red blood.