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Fall From Grace Page 33


  The Merkabah lifted and soared across the cityscape with a fluid agility that enthralled the Host. Michael coordinated with Gabriel to circle around buildings and dip through the streets, the exultation of flight casting his troubles into the wind. His lips rose into a smile and parted with a hoot of joy. Michael’s call drew a procession of enthusiastic angels in the Merkabah’s wake.

  The Host gathered around the Sanctuary in a miraculous display of vigilance. They were neither depressed nor submissive. They did not curse the Creator or Michael. They cheered for him, brazen with a faith and dedication that Satan could never attain from his demons. Refugees, healers, warriors, and even the wounded welcomed Michael back. The Host was still willing and proud to place their future in his hands.

  Michael was awestruck. “How did they salvage their faith?”

  “They never lost it, not in you,” Raphael said and flew next to the chariot. “It is good to see you back on your feet, or wings, as it were. We have all stumbled into weakness during this war, but you were always there to raise us from our own darkness. You never gave up on us, nor shall we in you. The faith that you have shown the Host since day one, we now return.”

  The love emanating throughout Araboth City was exactly what Michael felt when in the presence of the Fires of Creation, perhaps even greater. Miracles were not only formed from His divine intervention, they were also the product of community and family. Brotherhood allowed the Host to accomplish the impossible time and time again.

  “They’re waiting for you,” Gabriel encouraged.

  “What should I say?” No words were grand enough to properly express the depth of Michael’s gratitude.

  “Whatever is in your heart,” Raphael added.

  “We…are not conquered,” Michael said under his breath, surprising himself with the realization. “We are not conquered.” He automatically unsheathed Excalibur and raised the blade. As his soul rose from despair, the white flames rekindled and burned dazzling beams through the night sky.

  “We are not conquered! The demons can surround us, they can storm our city, they can break our bodies, but we will endure. We will persevere because we do not fight only for our own future. We fight for Mankind’s future. We fight for the future of Father’s Creation. Satanail’s hunger for power will never be satiated. He will not cease his subjugation with our Kingdom.

  “In our Sanctuary lies a gateway to the human world. Satanail plans to march his legions there and lay waste to all of Mankind. They cannot succeed. They will not succeed. Even if Araboth crumbles around us, no demon shall set foot through these doors. Mankind is our family. As children of the Creator, we live or die together. This is our last stand!”

  The Host beat their wings together in approving fanfare.

  Michael swiped Excalibur at Satan’s encampment outside the city walls. “If Satanail and his demon mongrels desire damnation, then we shall deliver them unto it. We are more than angels. We are more than warriors. Let all of Creation know this—

  “WE ARE GUARDIANS!”

  Satan traipsed around Metatron using Wormwood as a cane, adding a distinguished air to his gait. Reconditioned Thrones captured during the raid of Raqia clotted the arterial bleeding from Metatron’s stumps but left the nerves split and inflamed. The incessant pain put the Seraph in a catatonic state. Death couldn’t have him.

  “Merkabah, Merkabah…what does it mean?” Satan lifted Metatron’s chin with the tip of Wormwood. A string of drool seeped out in an unintelligible reply. “You’re absolutely right. It could be anything. Only one knows its full meaning. Leave us,” he ordered the Thrones.

  The closer Satan’s goals became, the more tempted he was to disregard tactics for the visceral delight of destruction. He envied the gratuitous freedom his sons experienced by giving themselves over completely to the demonic metamorphosis, but he couldn’t join them yet. The obscurity of the Merkabah Project was like a nervous tick that kept him apprehensive enough to maintain the reason to see his rebellion properly concluded. Satan was saving his most devastating gambit for last like a swift heel to break the back of a downed foe.

  “We’ve the capacity for near-infinite knowledge. There aren’t many concepts beyond our understanding. But death? That’s a valid mystery. The uncharted frontier of the soul. I expect you have one foot in that realm now. Can you see the Creator?”

  Satan peered into Metatron’s pupils. They were fully dilated like windows into the land of the dead. Perhaps if he looked through Metatron, he could glimpse the Creator and uncover more about the Merkabah.

  “Our abilities aren’t ‘gifts.’ The Choirs aren’t unique. We’re all from the same mold. The Seraphim saw certain talents present themselves more than others in angels, and in their focus, they limited what those angels could’ve become. Conscious intent or not, it was a means of control. But I’ve studied every talent of every Choir. I am complete.” Satan grasped Metatron’s temples and dug his fingernails under the skin. “You may know nothing more of the Merkabah, but He does. Show me what you see, Scribe. Show me our Father.”

  Satan pressed his forehead to Metatron’s and shattered the thin sheet of ice that remained of his willpower. Once linked with the Seraph, he swam in a fascinating convergence of science and metaphysics. The boundaries between Heaven and the unknown melded in a swirling sum of matter.

  “He’s calling to you, Metatron. Go to Him.”

  The specifics of the Merkabah remained beyond sight. The Creator’s mind—what Satan understood to be the collective consciousness of all energy in the Cosmos—was an impenetrable wall, devastating in its almighty height. But He didn’t expel Satan, instead seeming to open a door specifically for him. It felt like He wanted Satan to peer behind the wall, but why?

  Time folded in on itself, merging past, present, and future as if it were all occurring simultaneously. Satan had thought that he understood what it meant to have knowledge, but even his educated mind was but a speck of dust in the expanse of Father’s omniscience.

  Satan saw the inception of Heaven, a perfect work of art that formed in the cosmic expansion. He saw the angels rise and make the realm their own. He saw his rebellion and the war ravage its regions. If time was fluid, had the Creator already seen Satan’s rebellion before he was even created? Was everything that happened preordained? Did free will exist in Creation?

  You knew that I’d rebel, Father, and yet you still created me, Satan thought. All of the blood that has befallen Heaven drips from your hands as well. You saw it and allowed it to happen. Why? What are we to you?

  Threads of the future unraveled before Satan. Araboth City was a condemned, charred skeleton. Not one building remained standing; even the Sanctuary was a pile of rubble.

  Then my victory is assured. You’ve not stopped me because I’m meant to succeed. You can’t stop me.

  The scenery swirled like mixed paint and morphed into an animated portrait of two six-winged angels fighting: Satan and Michael. They would have the duel that Satan craved, but the outcome wasn’t what he prophesized. The view of their battle zoomed closer like the Creator was emphasizing a moment.

  Michael stood over Satan, foot pressing his skull to the ground, and drew back Excalibur to kill him. Satan felt the pressure of Michael’s heel and the rapid, terrified thumps of his own heart. It was the fear of death, cold and isolating.

  Satan was defeated.

  A searing flash branded the image in Satan’s mind before his connection with Metatron was broken. His head throbbed, compressed under the immense weight of precognition. Viscous blood leaked from his ears and nose.

  No living being was meant to see their cause of death.

  “It’s not true, Father!” Satan shouted. “You conjure canards, but I control my morrow. This Merkabah, or whatever you’ve given Michael, it changes nothing.”

  Satan couldn’t let the Creator’s manipulations derail him. That was the point of his jaunt through time, to scare him, but Satan didn’t cower before fear. He comma
nded it.

  Vibrations beneath the ground focused Satan on the present. Two hands burst up as someone clawed to the surface—Lilith. Sammael’s legs were integrated with her body but had become more slender and feminine. Even slathered in filth, she had a voluptuous allure that sent tingles of arousal through him. After the war, Satan planned to explore those sensations.

  “Those are an improvement,” he said while fondling Lilith’s new legs with his eyes. “The serpentine form wasn’t doing you any favors.”

  Lilith brushed off the insult. “I thought I’d find Lucifer at your side. Isn’t he your dog of choice?”

  “Alas, Lucifer is no longer with us. He was a victim of his own suspicions.”

  “I’m sure.” Lilith looked past Satan to Metatron. “What’ve you done to that angel?” She seemed…horrified. Where was the sadist that was so enthralled by Satanail’s torture?

  “Aggressive conversations between old friends.”

  Lilith walked around Metatron to examine his wounds, stumbling through the motions of her new appendages. “I’ve seen this before, a surgical pleasure from agony. It seems you’ve adopted a passion for Sammael’s work.” There was bile, loathing, in her every syllable.

  “Interrogation is a necessity of war. I’ve nothing in common with your late husband or his extracurricular activities.”

  “This angel has nothing left to offer. Why does he still live if not to extend his pain for your gratification?”

  “He’s a Seraph. I’d not lightly discard such a rarity.” Satan snagged Lilith by the throat and hoisted her off the ground. “But you…you’re a convenience. At best, a curiosity. I suggest you silence your ill-fitting comparisons, lest I become bored with the prospects of your companionship. What do you have to report?”

  “Everything is in order,” Lilith squeaked from under Satan’s fingers. “They but await your signal.”

  “Very good. Return to Mathey, and take the Seraph with you. I don’t want him slipping through the cracks of battle. We’ll discuss the arrangements of our ‘relationship’ after I reclaim Araboth. Queen of Creation has a pleasant ring, doesn’t it?”

  “I hate you. I hope—I pray—that Michael kills you.”

  “You’re not alone in that sentiment.”

  Satan relaxed his grip and forced Lilith into a long, full kiss. Her plump lips were delicious, like the sweet of honey mixed with the metallic tinge of blood, but an outbreak of cheering spoiled his appetite.

  “What’s that?”

  “The answer to my prayers,” Lilith replied with a grin.

  Satan flung Lilith face-first onto the dirt and exited his tent. The hollering grew louder, but it wasn’t the avaricious call of his demons. The cheers were coming from within Araboth City. Uriel and his angels stationed outside the gates joined in, their voices bursting with something that Satan thought he had eradicated from Heaven: hope.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Razing of Araboth City

  Morning light spread across Araboth’s ashen plains, but the city remained eclipsed by the idling storm that obscured its upper levels. Satan engraved every sensation into his memory like they were phenomena that occurred once in a millennium. The humid air moistening his feathers, the spectrum of subtle colors tinting the sky, even the aberrant silence absent chirping birds—he wanted to remember it all. When the time came for his well of mortality to run dry, he would die knowing that the minutiae of his triumph was preserved in the memoirs of his soul.

  Satan marched through the demonic legions, his armor augmented by Beelzebub with the remains of the human “assassin.” Sharpened bones coated in metal lined the framework of his six wings like flapping swords. His knuckles were reinforced with shorn vertebrae for mauling flesh. Thick arm and leg bones were fused onto his grieves to absorb or parry blows. His crest, the inverted pentagram, was painted on his chestplate in human blood. Satan had desecrated the Creator’s so-called greatest achievement in his ultimate blasphemy.

  Satan stepped onto the forbidden ground between his sons and the angels guarding the city gates. They tensed, each praying that Wormwood wouldn’t hunger for their lives first…but he didn’t attack. Instead, Satan presented the human’s skull to Uriel and crushed it in his hands, sifting the fragments onto the mud. That was his final speech. My best one yet, he praised.

  Araboth: Satan took a fond look at the city once revered as his architectural opus and then plunged Wormwood deep into the terrain. Its vacuum gorged on the sludge, expanding a round depression like a sinkhole. Standing alone in the crater, Satan closed the nodule and waited. The signal was sent. He hoped that Lilith’s report was truthful, for her sake.

  The ground trembled around the city’s circumference, knocked the angels off their feet, and ruptured into cavernous tunnels dug below the surface. The walls of Araboth sank into the abyssal pits in a complete obliteration of its fortifications. There was no need to scale or punch through them—there never was. In one fell swoop, every section had plunged underground.

  Forgotten erupted from the chasms and swarmed over Uriel’s angels like a flesh-eating smog. They had been digging beneath the walls for days, chipping away at the land’s integrity and waiting for Satan’s signal to bring it all down. They were delirious with hunger, a sentient weapon loosed upon his unsuspecting foes.

  “Pull back into the city,” Uriel ordered.

  The angels retreated as Satan hovered over the crumbling main gate. Packs of Forgotten joined his demons at the borders, their loyalty earned with blood, but this was a moment for him to enjoy alone. Araboth, your Creator has returned. I will free you.

  Satan’s first steps into the city limits were glorious. Millions of angels watched his entrance from the streets and buildings, but the one he wanted was nowhere in sight.

  “MICHAEL!”

  Satan’s voice was a spotlight searching for his alter ego. He began to wonder if the Seraph’s bravery had depleted, but then an unmistakable figure soared forth.

  Michael’s chest tightened with fear, anticipation, anxiety, and a guilty relief that it would all soon end…one way or another. Araboth’s walls had been laid to waste in an alliance of demon and Forgotten that no one could have predicted. A united enemy surrounded the city, kept at bay only by Satan’s vanity. He stood alone in the city entrance, thinking himself a deity. But before the day was done, Satan would know that he was not, and could never be, the Creator. Their Father’s works originated from an intrinsic love of life. Satan exacted death upon Heaven like splashing a bucket of paint over the canvas of a masterpiece and declaring it his own.

  Satan created nothing. He was the Dragon of Chaos.

  Michael landed by Satan, feet splitting the square in a burst of cobblestone. Thunder cracked from the slate clouds, and a deluge began to flood the streets. The rain stung like a mild acid with corrosive elements that aggravated the fires roasting the city instead of dousing them.

  “The great walls of Araboth have fallen. Defy me, Michael, and the rest of the city shall follow,” Satan said with smug satisfaction. He had no intention of accepting anyone’s surrender.

  “You were an angel, Satanail, your glory unrivaled. You flew with the Host of Heaven. Now, you walk among abominations.”

  “I command them, and what do you have? The fledgling scraps of a conquered people. Is this all the Creator can muster to oppose me?” What the Host had shown Michael, their ceaseless bravery—Satan’s insult only affirmed his ignorance. The value of one angel, the value of life, was beyond his comprehension.

  “No, it is not.”

  Michael raised Excalibur and funneled his grace through the blade. A pillar of bleached flames swirled from the tip and pierced the clouds.

  Chariots, hundreds deep, descended from the storm’s cover and lined the skies with daunting uniformity. They had been hidden on the rooftops of the highest towers, defenders of the city awaiting Michael’s beacon. The Host readied their weapons, stomping and flapping to let Satan know that not one
of them was conquered, physically or spiritually.

  Gabriel swooped down with Michael’s Merkabah and slung him inside, casting their shadow over Satan. Michael saw the slightest twitch of suppressed apprehension in his eyes.

  “It ends here,” Michael said.

  “You’re all going to die.”

  Satan waved his legions into the city. Demons, Forgotten, and war machines advanced over the remnants of the walls to execute his genocidal orders, bloodlust leaking from their pores like sweat. The canopy of chariots contained Mammon’s aerial demons below the clouds while Beelzebub’s infantry and the wingless Forgotten jammed into the square.

  The climax of Heaven’s war was about to commence.

  “What do you say, Michael? One final race?” Satan taunted.

  “You will never reach the Sanctuary alive.”

  “And you never were fast enough to catch me.” Satan launched towards the Sanctuary in a murderous gray and black blur. “To the Sanctuary! To Mankind! BURN IT ALL!”

  The chase was on.

  Araboth City was assailed with indiscriminate warfare like a meltdown of all sanity and order. Uriel directed the Host in slowing the waves of demons and Forgotten smashing through the streets in a black tsunami. Acidic rain drenched the coals of his armor and fueled the fires, putting his mechanical wings in overdrive. His hammer toppled whole squads of enemies only to have the clearings instantly refilled. The demons were defying all instincts of self-preservation and willing to hurl themselves into certain death if it meant bringing even one angel with them.

  How do we rout a foe with raving belief in their cause and the bounties of death? Against his every impulse, Uriel traded overt offense for furtive tactics. Michael required more of him than a warrior’s spirit. In this battle, aggression couldn’t be overpowered by aggression. The Host fought knowing that only Michael’s sword could achieve lasting victory. To justify their senseless fatalities, to give each angel’s sacrifice meaning, they needed Uriel the Seraph.