Fall From Grace Read online

  At the armory, angels volunteered for deployment in record numbers. Michael’s example spurred them to take their lives into their own hands. They didn’t want to be defenseless refugees anymore. They wanted to be warriors. Never again would they be herded for slaughter as in Raqia.

  Dominions led rescue missions to vulnerable settlements across Heaven, fending off demons and recruiting more angels. Empowering them. Swelling the Host’s ranks. Their missions restored dignity and confidence, but Michael had to ensure that their objective was to save lives…not take them. An angel could not relish violence or killing. To recognize the necessity of battle but never enjoy it—that was the last field of decency separating the Host from Satan’s demons.

  Michael moved on to Uriel’s forge where the Monolith was being melted down. He watched his own golden visage become an indistinct glob to be recast. A sword or spear was an inanimate object that could do no harm until given intent by the one who wields it. What would Michael become when his grace was channeled into a weapon of war? Every night, he dreamed of how that angel would bring death upon the Host and Mankind, but fear had inhibited his actions long enough.

  “More angels, more weapons,” Uriel said as the remnants of the Monolith became molten metal. “Sad, but it’d be a farce to have it yet standing. The Heavenly Choirs remain only in name.” It seemed his idealism was clipped with his wings.

  “We can melt down all of Araboth, but the substance from which our grace was forged is an immutable ore.”

  “Not all of it.”

  The slits on Uriel’s back pushed out his wing stumps. Metal was grafted onto them and released telescopic rods that mirrored the bone framework of wings.

  “Uriel—”

  “I know. It’s disgusting. A selfish fantasy of science.”

  “I was going to say remarkable,” Michael replied, examining the metallic appendages. “But wings do not make the angel. Your grace cannot be taken, only rejected. Show everyone in Heaven that the demons have taken nothing from you.”

  “Oh, I intend to. This is just the initial framework. Raphael fused the metal into my muscles and nerves. Not really the best aesthetic, but it’ll do.”

  “Aesthetics will not stop Satanail from moving on Araboth City,” Michael cautioned and handed Uriel a parchment with the Merkabah design. “If all else fails and the walls are breached, we will need to command the skies. With these, we can contain the fight on the ground and split their numbers through the streets.”

  “The refinement, the symmetry…truly you are the Creator’s vessel,” Uriel said with admiration. “The amount specified will take time, but I’ll begin immediately.”

  “Use the Monolith gold so that it may continue to inspire the Host. These are to be symbols of protection and deployed only when all other options are exhausted.”

  “Your will, my hands,” Uriel said in the traditional blacksmith reply. He began to leave, eager to commence construction.

  “I have another request,” Michael added, having come to an overdue decision. “I cannot wage war with only my fists. I am obligated to wield a weapon.”

  “No, not a weapon. Something more. Something divine.”

  Uriel led Michael to his personal workshop. He opened a chest and removed something wrapped in a decorative cloth. Beneath the cloth was a brilliant sword with angelic carvings down the stark white blade that told Michael’s life story. It was as elegant a weapon as he had ever seen, its purpose not crude but compassionate, as if the blade was forged from an extract of his own grace.

  “I call it Excalibur, crafted from an alloy I discovered within the mountain shortly after our inception. I believe it’s a fusion of the elements within all of us, like a byproduct of our souls’ ignition. I held onto it, waiting for the day when I would know its need. Look at the hilt.”

  The hilt was decorated with a carving of Michael taking the hand of a human, both surrounded by ancient angelic runes used only by the Seraphim. It read—

  “Why we fight.”

  “So your every swing has proper intent,” Uriel explained with humble pride in his work.

  Michael gripped Excalibur. Though quite long, it almost felt weightless and swung with perfect balance.

  Flames erupted around the exterior of the blade that burned like the deific heat of creation. Excalibur pulsed with life, fertile and destructive, as if a piece of the Creator was preserved within the alloy when He gave the Host breath all those millennia ago.

  This fire…I have felt its likeness in you, Father. I am your sword.

  In Limbo, Satan labored over the sweltering flames of a fire pit, heating a slab of ebony ore carved from the volcanic depths of Mount Maadim. Using only his hands, Satan molded the metal into a blade. He decided that a sword would provide the ideal balance of length, versatility, and lethality. Without the aid of a hammer, it took immense strength and concentration to craft the shape, but the arduous task was therapeutic. Satan’s frustrations excreted with his perspiration, helping him to hush the increasing seduction of brash, emotional decisions.

  The bliss that accompanied Sammael’s death was sullied by Lucifer’s failure. He had put on a pitiful, and very public, display against Michael and relinquished many of the captured Thrones. The blitz of Raqia was meant to ensure that any felled angels remained as such. As a general, Lucifer should’ve given his life before retracting the mission. Instead, he was beaten. Humiliated. The demons retreated, tails between their legs like scared pups.

  Michael was laughing at them.

  The war needs to end, he says. Such impertinence! I decide when it ends. Satan shaped the blade’s sharp edge, drawing blood from his fingertips. Don’t allow him to goad you. Don’t act in haste. Few planks remain to be laid upon the bridge to victory. Adhere to the plan, and my Heaven will arise from the ashes of their bones.

  Satan’s hands throbbed, riddled with blisters, but the results of his exertion were exquisite. The long, black blade had a slight curve with a thin strip of ruby embedded along the edge. It ended with a handle wrapped in cured angel skin, fit for either one or two hands. The sword swung like a living extension of Satan’s arm, but something was missing, something to afflict fear into the souls of his enemies before the blade cleaved them in twain. He searched a coffer of personal items removed from his home in Araboth and found a prototype of the element nodules used in the Nest. Perfect, Satan thought and exited his tent.

  Looking over Limbo, Satan should’ve been thrilled with the advances. Construction of his war machines was well underway, and his demons were even more loyal. Driven. But Satan had grown to hate Limbo. The skyline of Araboth was a constant thorn in his eye. Satan needed to reclaim his home, for himself and for the success of his rebellion. Without the city, every one of his victories was incidental. Michael knew it—and flaunted it—from his precious Sanctuary.

  A synchronized flap of Satan’s wings shot him straight up, sword piercing the way forth until Limbo and Araboth City disappeared under the clouds. Until the clouds faded into fluffy, vaporous specks. Until all light gave way at the hem of Heaven’s borders. But Satan met no resistance as the vastness of Creation spread around him. The lack of breathable air wasn’t the main challenge—it was the sheer cold that made his cells vibrate like a bell rung in too small a room.

  Satan coasted using little flaps to adjust his trajectory. He felt like a deity beckoned by infinite worlds but saw no stars or distant galaxies, only the black. Mammon had revealed exactly why there was no star ocean: Heaven was isolated by a black hole, a collection of compacted mass that deformed a region of space into a pit of super-dense gravity. Nothing, not even light, could escape its pull. Satan was a black hole on Heaven, and thus it was his rightful power to wield.

  In the early days of the Observatory, Mammon (as Time) discovered the black hole. He constructed the telescopes specifically to glimpse Creation beyond it, one of Heaven’s processes that bent the laws of nature. Time mapped what he deemed the “event horizon,” or p
oint of no return. Now, Satan had to tread that invisible boundary. As he flew closer, it felt like the matter of his physical self was being sucked into subatomic particles. He had to work fast.

  The glass nodules, found in their raw state when Satanail and Michael dug the Sanctuary catacombs, also functioned outside of natural law. Glass in name only, the mysterious spheres had an innate vacuum effect capable of trapping the essence of anything. Whatever was pulled within the nodule, such as the elements of weather, was preserved in a bubble of inertia.

  Satan twisted the nodule casing open and beheld a mystical enigma in his hands. It filled with the impenetrable, devouring gravitational force of the black hole. Scientifically speaking, the nodule should’ve immediately collapsed in on itself…but it didn’t. It was a gift from Creation meant for him to see the war to its rightful conclusion.

  Satan inserted the nodule into a spherical hole on his sword near the handle and locked it into place. The nodule spun on its axis, the black hole within primed to siphon the life from his enemies.

  “Behold, Father, Wormwood: the blade that will slice the umbilical cord of Heaven.”

  From below, Satan’s descent would’ve looked like a celestial object hurled from the Creator. He landed in Limbo’s stockades and thrust Wormwood into the torso of a prisoner. By turning his wrist, its handle rotated and opened the nodule buried inside the angel’s chest. Blood, organs, bones—it was all sucked into the miniature black hole.

  Satan closed the nodule and ripped Wormwood free. The prisoner dropped dead, steam rising from the hollow cavity.

  Silence.

  The demons had committed heinous acts of violence, but this crime set them all aback. Satan let it sear into their memory while casting his eyes across the crowd.

  Never let them forget what I’m capable of.

  Never let them forget who I am.

  Love me, my sons, but fear me more.

  “LUCIFER!” Satan bellowed.

  The demons parted, grateful not to be Satan’s quarry. Lucifer flew ahead and was shunned as if his stigma was contagious.

  “Father?”

  “We must talk.” Satan’s damning emphasis on “talk” sent chills across Limbo.

  Satan paraded Lucifer through the city for all to see before shoving him into his tent. A public lashing would be an effective deterrent, but a punishment too horrible to be seen or spoken of would have a more lasting impact.

  “On your knees,” Satan ordered. Lucifer obeyed, mentally destitute and seeming to welcome death. “Have you nothing to say for your actions?”

  “I’ve done all that I’m able, Father. I believe in your vision, b-b-but—”

  Satan kicked Lucifer in the stomach, stealing his breath.

  “There is no ‘but,’ only submission. Obedience. Do you know why Michael spared you?”

  “Mercy. He doesn’t believe you’re c-c-capable of it. That it makes him more ethical than you.”

  “It was mockery, not mercy. You should’ve died fighting or taken your own life from the shame. Instead, I have to.”

  Satan ripped open the hatch hidden beneath his dirt floor and thrust Lucifer’s head into the hole. The cannibalistic clicks of Forgotten echoed from it.

  “Your death will be more profitable than your life…as a meal for my new minions.”

  Lucifer didn’t scream or offer any pleas for his life. He didn’t even close his eyes as the Forgotten clawed up the hole, dirty fingers scratching towards his face. They particularly enjoyed ingesting the squiggly cranial tissue, a fun fact Satan had learned when disposing of some unlucky angels from the stockades.

  It wouldn’t be a quick death.

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be a b-b-better son, Father.”

  Satan slammed the hatch closed and threw the general back.

  Why can’t I kill him? He has failed me. He deserves to die. Why should I care about him? What is this persistent sentiment?

  Residual traces of Satanail were still alive within Satan and loved Lucifer—no, Azazel—as a brother, far above any of his demonic sons. Satanail loved the quirky, stuttering angel who believed in him from word one. His apprentice.

  Lucifer crawled to Satan’s feet. “All I want is to serve you, but I d-d-don’t know how. I’m not a warrior. I’m not a demon. I’m not an angel. What am I? Why can’t I shed this, this—”

  “Conscience. That’s what is obstructing your ascension, but it’s not your fault. I understand that now,” Satan said and lifted Lucifer to his feet. He composed a note and sealed it with his blood. “I have a special task for you. Go to Mathey and deliver these orders to the one called Lilith. The Forgotten have joined my legions but are still animals. You may not return alive.”

  “Your generosity won’t be w-w-wasted. I’ll get it done.”

  A voyage to Mathey could both vindicate Lucifer and begin Lilith’s service, or they’d try to kill each other. Whether one, both, or neither survived, the nature of their loyalties would be authenticated.

  “During your flight, meditate on what a conscience gives you and what it takes away. We aren’t meant to feel this pain that afflicts you.” The advice dug up Satan’s own chronic, personal liabilities. Best to lead by example.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “We all must transcend our old emotional ties and emerge stronger,” Satan said and reopened the hatch. “Or not at all.”

  “You’re leaving Limbo? But Michael—”

  “Will be distracted. Dagon has been dispatched to the Nest.”

  “Dagon…then it’s starting?”

  Dagon, formerly the Archangel Hailael, was given a secret charge known only to Satan and his generals. A weapon of mass destruction was lying in wait right under Michael’s nose.

  “This is the beginning of the end, Lucifer. Swim with me in the deep, or drown in it alone. I won’t keep you afloat again.”

  Satan jumped into the hole and landed on a pile of freshly dug soil. A handful of Forgotten knelt in front of him, a select group that he smuggled back from Mathey. Since then, they had been boring an underground tunnel across Araboth. They were swift and tireless—the ideal laborers.

  “Lead the way.”

  The Forgotten resumed burrowing. Satan followed in their wake, the hole barely big enough for him to crawl. It wasn’t plausible for his legions to use the tunnel, but it was perfect for a single warrior on a stealth mission. There was no demon that Satan trusted to accomplish this reconnaissance. He nudged forward on his stomach, slinking like a worm, envisioning what was above as he passed under the plains…under the city walls…

  Satan was returning home to Araboth City.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Awakening

  Michael knew that something was amiss at the Nest when the tornadoes guarding Araboth started to fluctuate. The cyclonic shields broke from rotation and pummeled the walls, ripping out chunks and lobbing boulders into the city. If exacerbated, the tornadoes would shred the gates, clearing an entryway for Satan’s invasion. The Watchers stationed in Shamayim had gone dark, and there was no contact from the Cherubim. A caustic truth eroded Michael’s wishful denial: the Nest was under attack.

  A squad of five thousand warrior angels joined Michael on a rescue mission. If the Nest was compromised, the lives of their brothers were more important than salvaging a doomed facility. As they approached Shamayim, the rainbow streams of energy that normally filled the sky had become a toxic miasma. The region was assailed by preternatural, antagonistic weather: lightning sizzled a blizzard’s snowfall; thunderclouds dumped boiling rain; and the atmosphere was peppered with contrasting pockets of freezing and searing air. During the Nest’s construction, Michael voiced concerns about the potential climatic damage if it ever malfunctioned, but the entropy pelting the angels exceeded his worst misgivings.

  Michael’s warriors dove below the mercurial weather and into the thick of a rampant battle. Multiple demonic legions had cut down the Dominion leadership and scattered their remaining
forces. The Cherubim had sealed themselves within the Nest, but explosions weakened its stone columns. As it teetered like a chair on flimsy legs, the silver tendrils along the columns ripped up from the soil and flung unchecked energy around the Nest.

  “Angels, regroup!” Michael shouted, using Excalibur’s flames to mobilize the addled angels and reinforce his warriors. “Press forward to the Nest! Evacuate the Cherubim!”

  Michael led the charge, angels and demons flying at each other like colliding migrations of birds. Excalibur sliced through armor like a concentrated beam of sunlight and cauterized the wounds. The demons’ deaths were brisk and painless, their souls returned to the Creator for absolution. Michael saw repose on their dead faces, all of the rage and pain finally released. For some, this was the only means of salvation. Rest in peace, brothers—

  An angel flying beside Michael burst into a slush of viscera.

  Demons were latching onto them and detonating explosives. Taking one’s own life to cause the death of another…every time Michael thought he knew what fermented in the bowels of war, it retched more atrocities.

  “Evasive flight,” he ordered and reformed the angels in a straight line to weave through the oncoming bombers.

  Demons missed their targets and ruptured around the angels like chunky, hematic fireworks. Who would order such vindictive self-sacrifice? In previous battles, the demons disbanded when their leadership was subdued, but Michael saw no commanders. Satan, Lucifer, Mammon, Beelzebub—none were present, so who was directing the demons?

  One of the columns supporting the Nest like the arm of a stone titan finally gave out. Active tendrils unraveled from the stacked slabs of rock and snapped free. The saucer groaned, sliding into a lopsided dip on the remaining columns.

  “Faster! FASTER!”

  Michael shot for the Nest entrance, dodging the whips of disintegrative energy and blowing through a demonic barricade. He used Excalibur to carve an opening in the sealed metal door.