‘I will have the other stars tear you apart with their teeth.You will be split into a trillion more pieces.We will scatter you across the emptiness, and we will never grant you a body of your own.Apsinthos, you will stop doing this.’
‘Perhaps if I were just one star and not pieces of every star in the heavens — I would be content to end nothing more than myself.It is your cowardice that gifts me the joy to end you all with me.To end all things with me.’
‘You will leave that angel.’
‘He is my angel now.He will be my messenger.He will be my body.I’ve enveloped his mind so completely that you will not be able to speak to him now, Kimah.I have learned from all the times I tried to speak to man.I have learned from what we did to the angel of the stars.This one will only hear me.And I am noble to do it.I will end your suffering, too.After it is all over — you will absolve me.’
CHAPTER7
Michael was supposed to torture Uriel today.
Instead, he was laying in bed, feeling too warm, almost like he were still burning in the heart of Heaven.There was, however, the echo of bird chirps in his ears, a remnant from his dreams of Earth.It’d been years now since he’d last been ordered down from paradise, and yet he kept seeing it every time he closed his eyes.Even with such great duties to focus on — Uriel’s punishment, the chief prince’s revenge for all that the wisest, oldest archangel had made him suffer — Michael still found himself thinking of Earth.Might God send him there again, after the torture?It would mean the end of the world if he descended to human land so soon, but he wanted it nonetheless.And for an angel — the apocalypse was a good thing, a blessed thing.For many men, it was a blessed thing as well.
Since the time of Christ, Michael had lived in barracks: a stone fortress on a road that ran through the center of the city and to the closed gates, shielding them from clouds and, recently, any humans that might pass by in their metallic, flying beasts.Rising, slow, to sit up and rub an eye, the chief prince was plopped over a colorless mattress in a room of stone, sparsely populated with plain furniture.The room wasn’t entirely undecorated, however; the wall before him upheld a mural of Jesus and his mother.Certainly, an angel had painted the image thinking Michael would appreciate it.
He did not.Huffing, Michael kicked away the bedsheets, pivoting to set his feet against a thin, beige carpet, patterned but not excessively so.‘It’s late, isn’t it?’He had no clock in the room, and Heaven’s light hadn’t set since the angels’ first war.Perhaps, he’d missed the hour chosen for Uriel’s punishment; a part of him hoped that was so, though he knew it would just be rescheduled.God cared little for punctuality.Uriel’s punishment would come, the end of the world would come.What mattered to Him was the promise more than the reckoning.The Lord liked to live in waiting, edging.
Additionally, Michael was hungry.He grimaced at the churn of his stomach, trying to fold into itself just to satisfy its emptiness.‘Earth food,’ he longed for as he pulled himself onto his feet with a sigh.First, he went for the armor on a stand by the entrance, which was just a few steps toward the door when one is of saint Michael’s stature.Then, he bound his body in the silver, reached for his reddened cloak and pulled it over his shoulders.Only his helmet did he refrain from for now, holding it in his left gauntlet while his right reached for the handle of the door.He could snap it with his fingers if he simply tensed his muscles, but for now, he pushed it forward.
Stepping into a narrow corridor with a low, curved ceiling — Michael reeled in some cold air through his nostrils with no hint of any brisk, earthy smell.But there was no time to continue with this fantasy; Michael saw his friend Phanuel with all his hair in a braid, sweeping at his back like a dark pendulum, the nature of his feathery layers curling many strands away from its form.He’d been in the midst of hurrying down the hall, toward Michael, before he saw him, stumbling over his own sandals — leather, a rarity to find in Heaven.
Almost inaudibly — “Michael.”Phanuel’s voice was harsh, rasped, and nothing more than a whisper.“The Lord calls for you.Gabriel is at the door.”Slow, the chief prince stepped closer to his friend, and he looked at him gravely as Phanuel lowered his gaze, almost in shame.Yesterday, Phanuel had asked Michael to speak to God first; he didn’t think it was right to torture an angel on behalf of a human, but Michael had reminded Phanuel that God had scorched him, that God had forgiven him but would never trust him again.And now, Phanuel didn’t argue.He returned to his usual silence, the one he offered to everyone but Michael.
There came a commotion of footsteps.One, then two, then three angels turned a corner far ahead, and they called out to Michael that Gabriel had arrived; all of them — in armor.
“I see,” Michael replied, then patted his friend’s firm bicep.“Phanuel will command for however long I’m absent.”At that, the angels’ faces pulled in amusement.Phanuel never commanded; he didn’t speak.“But I hope to return quickly.”As Michael began to walk again, he felt Phanuel’s fingers drag against his arm, as if tempted to stop him, before the touch faded.It seemed to be, could be, a warning, but for what?
Gabriel was inside the barracks by now, the only splash of color among three angels dressed in white, ankle-length robes; he was in a blue tunic, some white stars speckled on the sleeves and hem, with his white lily tucked by an ear.He could have been Mother Mary.“Oh, Michael.”He smiled soft, standing at the center of the spherical room that was the entrance to the fortress.“Did they tell you already?”
“What does our Father call us for, Gabriel?”Michael was tired, though he didn’t know why.“Is this about Uriel?”
“Uriel will be joining us,” Gabriel replied, his eyes tinged with sadness.“All the princes must stand before God.Metatron, too, will be there.”
“Will Mary be there?”Michael didn’t know why he asked.
“No,” Gabriel answered, voice uncertain, “I don’t believe so.”Mary’s name was often in Gabriel’s mouth.He had once said she was like his mother, but Michael had made a face at that.What did they need a mother for?They had God, and He was surely a mother as well as a father.But, Gabriel loved her, said she had given him a reason to speak for God after the flood.‘The flood.’Michael had almost forgotten of Gabriel’s small rebellion following the great flooding.
With this, Gabriel led the way out, Michael in tow.The instant that they’d stepped into the city, the messenger unfurled his wings from his back, then beat them strongly against the air, flinging himself up high.Pausing, Michael felt the usual anxious flame in his chest at the thought of confronting his Father and let it simmer before he beckoned out his own wings and rose to the sky.He glanced below to see the angels walking between the stone commandments rising as high as towers.Soon, all that the prince saw was traded for the oppressively golden firmament, then the cold embrace of the abyss.One ought to mention what angels made of man-made objects reaching Heaven, but not yet — because Michael encountered none of it today.
The road to God is very simple for an angel; in a sense, all their roads led to God.Michael could have flown anywhere, in any direction, and he would have found himself approaching his Father.For a human, this would be beautiful; for an angel, it could be horrific; Michael chose for it to be affirming — of his purpose, of who he was.Michael could never be lost, would always find his way back to the Lord’s loving hands.Michael saw those hands as he broke through the cosmic ceiling.
God, shining down not as a light but as a canyon of darkness.Pulling, pulling — at Michael’s side, Gabriel allowed himself to be pulled closer by the Lord’s weight.And he did not resist when his fall toward God stripped him of flesh to reveal fire.Michael shut his eyes as this happened to him too — uncertain whether he was allowing it, even accepting it.Nonetheless, there was nothing he could do when his other pairs of wings broke free from his body.To many angels, this spirit self was their truest self, but to Michael, it was no better than skin.
He appeared before God; he appeared beside angel Gabriel.
Near to Him hovered Metatron, Raphael, and a mostly-incarnate Uriel whose arms were still bound behind his back.The marks of torture were already on him: a burn seared across his face, craters of red dug over skin, one of his eyes swollen shut.Yet, his mouth was pressed into a fine, elegant line.He didn’t turn as Gabriel and Michael approached, nor did he move as Metatron’s booming voice rose to God: “My Lord, I see now that the end will truly come, as you have told us.”The man-angel was a whirl of wheels and fires, whereas Raphael was a cluster of cherubic faces, and Gabriel was a plume of seraphic flames.“I believe the angel Dina escaped to Earth to end it himself.”
“No,” replied Uriel in a low, scratching voice, head dipped in what could have passed for shame.“You know nothing, Enoch.”
Gabriel quickly interjected: “Father, I’ve brought Michael.”He fluttered closer, then folded a pair of wings before his face in reverence.“Whatever may occur, may you be merciful — as always.”
God the Father was on His Throne, appearing that day as jasper and river.An emerald rainbow haloed not above Him — for there could be nothing above Him — but at His back, His shadow of light.Only then did Michael notice that there were others by the Throne with them — dozens of angels holding instruments, their faces beautifully enfleshed while the majority of the archangels were in the dress of abomination; the Lord’s choir.Michael couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen them, had even wondered if they mattered to his Father at all after Lucifer’s fall.‘It doesn’t,’ an angel had murmured in the first century after the war, ‘sound the same without him.’Lucifer.
“God,” Uriel spoke, “you cannot end the world.”
The Lord answered, calm as judgment: “You do not care for man.Why not let them all be destroyed?”
Uriel’s voice sharpened.“I know that you sent me to the Earth for ten years to see what filth they are, and I did.I saw how they dirty all that they touch, how they cannot tend to their own lands or their own souls.But if their world is ended, then they will only carry that sin here.They will not come sinless.There are no sinless humans.”
