Dancing on the Head of a Pin

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  But the unthinkable occurred.

  As he fired, eyes squinting down the barrel of the weapon, Suroth moved, the arm holding the mighty axe placing the blade in the pathway of the bullet, deflecting the shot.

  It was as if the Nomad leader had planned it.

  The bullet ricocheted off the axe blade with a petulant whine, the shot then striking Lucifer’s pall close to where the previous blow had made its wound.

  Suroth smiled.

  “Thank you for the assistance, brother,” he said. “I’ll be sure to tell the Morningstar of your efforts.”

  Tendrils of angel magick erupted from the Nomad’s free hand. The force lifted Remy from the ground and threw him backward against the nearby wall of ice.

  The world exploded colorfully, and a curtain of black fell. Remy forced himself back to consciousness, listening as the gun begged him to fire again, to blast the smile off Suroth’s smug features, but he held back, hesitating to inflict any more unwanted damage.

  “For millennia we stood on the sidelines, waiting with our decision,” Suroth said, eyes riveted to the break in the sarcophagus’ front. “He’d come to us—before the beginning of the war—knowing our feelings, our hurt over what was about to occur in the most holy of places.”

  The Nomad leader turned the axe in his hand, deciding where he would strike next.

  “He understood that we would not stand with him, but he told us that there would come a time when we would know who was right and who was wrong. And then it would become our job . . . our sacred duty to act on the side of right.”

  Suroth’s eyes were suddenly upon Remy, holding him in place with their intensity.

  “It’s time, Remiel.”

  As if sensing Remy’s quandary, Madach launched his own attack, charging across the slick surface, sword poised, ready to strike.

  The Nomad leader barely acknowledged the fallen angel’s presence, swinging the axe toward the damage already wrought in the surface of the coffin.

  The sound of metal striking metal sounded in the chamber, and Remy was stunned to see that Madach had blocked the axe strike with the katana.

  “No more,” he stated as Suroth withdrew his weapon with a growl.

  “Can’t you see that I do this for you . . . for all who made the choice and have suffered for their decision?” Suroth stated, magickal discharge sparking from the tips of his fingers

  Remy pushed off from the wall, raising the Pitiless Colt to fire. He had to take the chance; their options were dwindling by the moment. Pain was his latest foe, threatening to drag him down deep into numbing oblivion as he took aim.

  “Get out of the way!” Remy screamed at Madach as he fired the gun. The fallen angel reacted, but not fast enough. The pistol discharged just as Suroth unleashed another blast of magickal fury. Madach was picked up and thrown viciously against the sarcophagus.

  Remy couldn’t be certain, but he thought he might’ve heard the sound of multiple bones breaking upon impact.

  Suroth gripped his shoulder as blood erupted from between his fingers. “I thought you, out of all of them, would understand,” the Nomad stated.

  “I understand that this isn’t the way it should be,” Remy stated, still managing to stand while aiming down the barrel of the gun. “We need to get past this . . . past the horrors that we inflicted upon one another. It can never go back to the way it was.”

  “But it can be made better,” Suroth urged.

  Remy shook his head. “No, the war is over.”

  The Nomad leader stood a little bit straighter then, removing his hand from the bullet wound in his shoulder.

  “Not over,” he said, just as Remy sensed movement behind him.

  The fallen prisoners of Tartarus spewed from the nearby tunnel mouth. Remy spread his wings, attempting to take flight over them, but there were many and they moved too fast. They gripped his ankles, his legs, pulling him down into a sea of them.

  “Only a brief interlude before the final act.”

  From between desperate, clawing fingers, Remy watched as Suroth moved closer to Lucifer’s pall, and to Madach lying broken before it.

  The fallen moved like a single organism, preventing Remy from raising his arm and firing the gun. It wasn’t long before it was wrenched from his grasp, disappearing somewhere into the mass of them.

  “It will be the dawning of a new angelic age,” the Nomad said, kicking away the samurai sword that the injured Madach was straining to reach. “The Creator surpassed by His creations—order brought to a universe in the throes of chaos.”

  Suroth reached down, picking Madach up by the throat and hauling him into the air.

  “He’ll be proven right,” Suroth said, pulling Madach in close to speak into his ear. “And the Lord God Almighty will be forced to bow before a new and glorious master.”

  From beneath the overwhelming weight of the fallen, Remy watched as Madach’s hand fumbled at his back pocket, slowly withdrawing one of the Pitiless daggers that had managed not to be lost in their violent struggles.

  Still dangling from the Nomad’s grasp, Madach struck, the arc of the blade directed toward Suroth’s throat. But the Nomad leader moved faster, the Pitiless axe dropping from his grip as he captured Madach’s wrist before the blade could bite.

  Suroth twisted the dagger from the fallen angel’s hand, and tossed Madach away.

  Suroth studied the blade.

  “Amazing to think that this was crafted by one of His special monkeys,” he observed, admiring the craftsmanship of the piece. “I seriously doubt a Heavenly craftsman could have done better.”

  He brought the blade closer to his ear, closing his eyes and listening to the voice of the weapon.

  “It’s waited a very long time for this,” he said, “to at last be reunited with its master.”

  And with those words, Suroth attacked the case, digging the tip of the dagger into the imperfection that he’d cut in the face of the sarcophagus. Again and again he jammed the blade into the stone, digging and twisting the metal, breaking away sections of the stone lid.

  Remy watched, horrified, as the broken pieces of the coffin fell to the ground. He struggled in the grasp of the fallen, but their grip on him was firm. They were sapping his strength, their voracious number feeding on his inner light.

  All he could do was watch.

  The knife wasn’t doing the trick fast enough, and the Nomad tossed it aside, going in search of something to quicken his work.

  Having already used the axe, Suroth reached for the katana.

  Madach screamed out, throwing his broken frame across the blade.

  “Don’t do this,” the fallen angel begged.

  Suroth extended an arm, using his magickal abilities to yank the injured Madach up into the air. The fallen still clung to the sword, his face twisted with the agony of his injuries.

  “Please don’t,” he pleaded. “If it starts again . . . if the war resumes, all the pain and suffering we went through . . . it’ll all be for nothing.”

  The Nomad leader approached the fallen, who hung in the air, grabbing the hilt of the sword and ripping it from his grasp. “Think of it as a precursor to victory,” Suroth said, admiring the blade before, with a wave of his hand, he cast the begging fallen aside, sending him flying through the air to land in a shattered heap across the chamber.

  “All the pain and suffering is fuel for what is to come,” Suroth said, gripping the hilt of the Japanese sword in both hands. “A victory in the making.”

  He spun around with a blurred swiftness, the sword blade cutting into the surface of the sarcophagus with an explosion of fiery blue.

  Still held in the grip of the escaped Tartarus prisoners, Remy flinched, as if the sword had bitten into his own flesh. He watched with disbelieving eyes as more pieces of Lucifer’s pall broke away.

  Remy tried one last attempt at breaking free.

  “Suroth!” he screamed, giving it everything he had, flexing his wings with enough force t
o temporarily toss off the fallen, allowing him to achieve flight.

  He had only one thought inside his head: to stop the Nomad leader. He hurtled toward Suroth, at the last second, spreading his wings, using the sudden resistance to slow his progress and drop to the ground. The Nomad spun toward him, sword in hand as Remy grabbed for a weapon, snatching up the Pitiless axe.

  “Of all of you, I thought you were the one that would understand our plans,” Suroth said, attacking with the skill and ferocity of the ancient samurai.

  Pitiless metal struck Pitiless metal, arcs of hissing energy exploding out from where the weapons kissed.

  “I understand them just fine, Nomad,” Remy said, swinging the axe wide, hoping to drag the razor-fine blade across his enemy’s midsection, severing him in two. “The problem is, they’re completely insane.”

  Suroth jumped back and sprang into the air. Remy watched as, with a cry sounding of both pain and pleasure, the angel sorcerer unfurled wings that had likely not seen light since before the war in Heaven. They were impressive things: a dark, almost chocolate brown, with a texture that reminded him of velvet.

  “To what do we owe the occasion?” Remy asked, springing up to meet his foe in flight.

  The Nomad seemed almost euphoric, his powerful feathered appendages beating the air.

  “The celibacy of flight has come to an end,” Suroth stated, reveling in each and every flap of his mighty wings. “I fly for all my brothers now.”

  Remy rushed the Nomad, raising the axe to his shoulder, ignoring the intensity of the pain radiating from his infected shoulder wound.

  Shrugging off his happiness like a cloak, Suroth met his attack like the warrior that he was, the millennia of not using his wings seemingly having little effect upon his aerial combat skills.

  The Nomad was just as ferocious in the air as he was on the ground, driving Remy back as he lashed out with the Japanese sword. Avoiding the blade’s bite, Remy cast his gaze up toward the chamber’s vast ceiling. Leaping above the Nomad’s attempt to separate his head from his body, Remy flapped his wings furiously, soaring up to the chamber’s highest regions.

  As he had hoped, Suroth followed.

  On the roof of the chamber, resembling the teeth of some enormous mythical beast, there hung huge dripping stalactites. A quick glance below and he saw the Nomad leader leering up at him, his eyes glistening with a madness that would not be satisfied with anything other than Remy’s death.

  Remy flapped his wings all the harder, increasing his speed, seemingly on a collision course with the ceiling fangs. Straining against the increasing pain in his shoulder, he lifted the Pitiless axe, swinging the razor-keen blade into one of the hangings of ice as he passed alongside. Darting between the chunks of falling debris, Remy struck at the next, and one after another, huge pieces of the ceiling ice rained down on the ascending angel.

  At first Remy thought his efforts had failed, the Nomad leader able to maneuver through the falling rubble as he continued to ascend. But one of Suroth’s powerful wings was struck by a large chunk of ice, sending the Nomad leader spinning into the path of other pieces of debris. It wasn’t long before the Nomad leader plummeted to the chamber floor.

  Remy dropped, following the rain of debris to the chamber floor. He hovered just above the ground, searching for Suroth’s body, imagining it buried beneath the tons of ice. Bodies of fallen angels who had been killed by pieces of the falling ceiling littered the ground. He could see others peering out fearfully from patches of shadow, having escaped their brethrens’ crushing fate.

  He doubted it would be long before they were again drawn to him.

  Touching down, Remy suddenly realized how weak he was, his legs barely able to support his weight. He dropped to his knees upon the ice, looking around the chamber.

  His eyes touched upon the body of Madach, lying bloodied and twisted upon the ground, protected from the falling rubble by Lucifer’s pall.

  Remy pushed himself to stand, stumbling over the shattered pieces of ceiling ice to reach his reluctant partner in this insane endeavor. The battle-axe slipped from his grasp, but he did not bother to retrieve it. He lowered himself to the ground, pulling Madach into his arms.

  “Hey,” he said, giving the fallen a gentle shake. “Are you still with me?”

  Madach’s eyes flickered open, looking into Remy’s fearfully.

  “It’s all right,” Remy reassured him. “I think we might’ve actually averted the disaster.”

  Remy chanced a look toward the sarcophagus; though large chunks were missing from its surface, none of the blows had actually managed to break through to the inside.

  He felt Madach’s body stiffen in his arms.

  “No,” the fallen angel stated, shaking his head. “No, it’s not all right at all.”

  The explosion immediately followed upon Madach’s words. Remy watched as the blood-covered form of Suroth rose from the rubble of the broken ceiling.

  Steam wafted up from his soaking robes, his features twisted in a combined grimace of rage and agony. In his hand he still clutched the hilt of the Pitiless katana. The blade had been snapped about midway down, but Suroth had still managed to hold on to his weapon.

  Twisting away from the still-thrashing Madach, Remy scrambled for the battle-axe. Maybe this was what Hell was for him, one countless battle after another, feeling his humanity slipping away inch by inch.

  Suroth opened his mouth to speak, his jaw hanging crookedly. It looked quite painful as he forced the words from his mouth.

  “With the end . . . I bring about the beginning,” the Nomad croaked and extended the sword, pointing the broken blade at Remy.

  Remy tensed to fly and was shocked when Suroth changed the direction of the blade, pivoting to point it at the sarcophagus.

  Snaking arcs of angelic power emerged from beneath the angel’s wet and tattered robes, tentacles of magick that snaked down the length of his arm, flowing into the hand that clutched the broken sword.

  A blast of angel fire, far stronger than anything the Nomad had conjured yet struck the front of Lucifer’s personal prison.

  The chamber was filled with a searing blue light, a magickal energy continued to flow from some vast reservoir within the Nomad leader.

  Remy knew what was happening, and that it was now too late to stop it.

  Suroth was sacrificing his angelic life force and adding it to the magick his kind had mastered so many millennia ago. The once-mighty Nomad leader had begun to wither, his body mass dwindling away to nothing before Remy’s eyes.

  Lucifer’s pall had begun to glow white, the intense heat radiating from the stone prison causing the moisture from the melting ice to evaporate, filling the chamber with a roiling steam that made it nearly impossible to see what was happening.

  Remy was drawn to the sarcophagus, flapping his wings aggressively to disperse the hindering mist. He was at least three feet from the pall when the magick pouring from Suroth abruptly ceased. A thunderous blast followed as the case exploded, lifting him off his feet and tossing him through the air.

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  Knowing that the unthinkable had occurred, Remy stood.

  The steam had begun to fade, a roiling layer of fog undulating like something alive close to the chamber floor. He moved toward where the stone coffin had once stood, broken pieces now scattered about the floor.

  As he moved closer, he saw kneeling amongst the fog and rubble, the form of a man. Remy froze, staring at the shape that suddenly stood and turned to face him.

  It was Madach who stood in the remains of the sarcophagus.

  Remy’s angelic instinct was immediately on alert. Something is wrong—horribly, horribly wrong, he thought as he strode closer, ignoring the pain that attempted to cripple his body.

  Standing beside Madach, Remy scanned the ground, finding only the broken pieces of the Morningstar’s imprisonment.

  Lucifer was nowhere to be found.

  R
emy felt their presence just as the screaming began.

  Horrible shrieks and wails echoed through the prison chamber, and he turned toward the cries of misery.

  The Thrones hovered in the air, their round, roiling bodies crackling with repressed Heavenly power. Tendrils of humming energy leapt from their bodies, lashing out at any and all who dared come too close.

  The fallen screamed as they died. They came en masse, unable to stop themselves from rushing toward the creatures of Heaven, hands outstretched, desperate to once again touch the light of the Almighty.