by Pottle, Bill
Alizel knew of a few angels who joined them. Kasadya, a Principality who rarely showed any emotion, was among the first. Alizel was grieved to learn that Abbadon followed him shortly afterward, though it didn’t fully surprise him. It seemed that Abbadon just wanted to be in the middle of everything that was happening. Eleleth’s beautiful face seemed to darken and her large eyes often were shiny with tears after that.
Alizel wanted nothing more than to ignore the rebellion and just go about his normal routine, pretending everything would go back to the way it used to be…but it was impossible. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about.
Even if he had been able to concentrate, his normal routine was off limits. He couldn’t go down to the Universe anymore; Azazel had sealed off the borders of Heaven to prevent any of the rebels from escaping. And there was no way that anyone was going to open the armory for weapons practice.
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It was a few weeks after the rebellion started that Alizel was meditating in one of the common rooms when he heard an urgent whisper.
“Alizel!” The voice was all too familiar, although it now held a strange harshness to it. Alizel was relieved to hear him, but at the same time wished he would go away.
“Verin,” he turned to face his friend, “what are you doing here? What if someone sees you?”
“It’s a risk I had to take,” he replied, pausing to glance around the room and make sure no one was listening. “You need to know what is happening.”
Alizel raised his eyebrows, intrigued but confused. “Tell me.” Verin’s eyes darted back and forth, intently scanning the walls as
if he could see through them and see hunters on the other side. His face was ragged, his bearing unsure and scared. He did not have the sword that he had stolen.
“They’re completely messing everything up. What do we have now? ‘Toy’ worlds that take forever and serve as nothing but amusement, weapons that we practice with for millennia but can’t use, and a leader who really doesn’t care what happens to us!”
“Things might not seem perfect,” Alizel was defensive, “but we must trust in God. He has not led us astray.”
“How long, Alizel?” Verin asked, shaking his head. “How long must we wait? Fifteen billion Earth years? I say that’s enough! God’s had His chance to run things. Now it’s time for someone more competent to step in and take over.”
Alizel stepped back, shocked. This was bordering on blasphemy. “More competent? God made this entire world! None of us could ever have done that. We didn’t even exist to be able to do something like that.”
Surely, something had driven Verin crazy.
“Okay,” he said, putting up his hands as if to ward off Alizel’s incredulity. “So God does know how to make a world, we’re grateful to Him for that. But just because He created the world doesn’t mean He knows what to do with it. I think it’s pretty obvious that He doesn’t.”
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“Not everyone agrees that things are as bad as you think they are,” Alizel growled. Uriel’s gentle tutelage came to mind. “I, for one, think our leaders are doing an excellent job.”
“An excellent job of what? Sitting back and doing nothing? Excuse me if I’m not overly impressed. Even I could do well leading a bunch of angels with no ambition to the Wonderful Land of Nowhere.”
“But why now? If we’ve waited this long, surely we could wait a little longer. Things are starting to happen on Earth. Look at the creatures that have evolved there!”
“Like it or not,” Verin countered, “things have started to happen here too. We can’t go back to how things were before we ended those angels’ existences.”
Alizel’s heart sank: Verin’s voice carried not even the barest hint of regret.
“I need to ask you something.” Verin lowered his voice and stared Alizel in the eye. “You have always been one of my closest friends…can I count on you to stand with us again?”
Alizel was aghast, and angry. His friend was crazy. “Go against God? And just how do you plan on winning? Will you end His existence too? Will you stand against Him with the weapon He forged?”
Verin smiled for the first time, a slow, unnerving grin that reached only halfway across his face. “We won’t need to. We’ll simply end enough angels’ existences that He is forced to let Zebub take over as the Ruler of Heaven.”
The reality of Verin’s insanity and outright rejection of the Father’s rule paralyzed Alizel. He could only stare back at him in shock, and anger, only then realizing just how far Verin had slid. To destroy enough of Heaven that God would fear? This was madness! His only consolation was that the plan was doomed to failure by the sheer lunacy of it.
Since Alizel didn’t answer for a few moments, Verin repeated his point. “We’ll send enough of them into the Containment that He’ll have no other choice!”
“Well then,” a voice materialized from the doorway, “why don’t you start with me?”
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They both whirled to see Azazel standing in the door, sword calmly held at his side.
“Don’t just stand there with your jaw dropped to the floor,” he continued, looking not the least bit worried. “You want to end some angel’s existence? Here I am.”
He kept the point of his sword lowered, daring Verin to strike first. Alizel wanted to throw himself in between them and protect his friend, but he was frozen both from Verin’s unthinkable utterances and Azazel’s commanding presence.
Nothing about Verin’s bearing gave the least indication that he had any intention of fighting Azazel, but he did look like he was about to throw a taunt in his face. His lips twisted with the effort of keeping it back, and then he turned and bolted as he thought better of it. Verin had no chance. The fight would have probably have been about even if Verin had a sword and Azazel was unarmed, but the reverse was true.
Azazel was after him, a golden streak racing into the corridors, sword held out in front of him. Verin had dashed through the opening in the wall, going this way and that through rooms and corridors, startling angels and trying to throw them into Azazel’s path.
Verin was lucky, and he was fast. He knew where he was going, and as Alizel flew upwards above the buildings to try to see the chase, he could tell that Verin was going to escape. He was crossing back on his original path, causing Azazel to have to backtrack and switch directions over and over. Alizel didn’t want the Power to touch his friend with the sword, but he couldn’t say he was entirely happy that he escaped either.
He knew Azazel should have been frustrated when he returned, but he couldn’t tell if he was or not. Azazel never seemed to show any emotion on the outside.
Verin’s conversation stayed in Alizel’s mind for the next few days. He couldn’t believe what he was suggesting. What had happened to cause his friend to become so crazy? He wanted to end the existence of as many angels as possible!
Fortunately, the rebellion was hampered by the fact that they only had the two original swords that Verin and Zebub had stolen.
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It was shortly after that time when something remarkable and even more disconcerting happened. No one really knew how important it was at the time, although they all had hints. The first time Alizel noticed anything amiss was one day when he was walking by the Portal. Mupiel was there, his excited eyes shining, and he waved Alizel over.
He saw the glint of the Realm of Matter below. The Portal was open. What could this mean? Had the rebellion finally been crushed? What had happened to Verin? He saw Azazel himself standing at attention near the Portal’s entrance.
“Does this mean that the trouble is over, sir?” Alizel felt excitement rush throughout his body. “Can we go down to the Universe again?”
“No,” he answered crisply. “We’ve just opened it for a brief moment
for someone to pass through.” Azazel didn’t seem too happy about it as his silver eyes scanned the horizon, almost daring one of the rebels to come and try to sneak away.
If Azazel didn’t want the Portal opened, that meant that someone had overruled him. But as chief angel in charge of the defense of Heaven, who could have done so?
Alizel glanced at Mupiel, who shrugged. Azazel didn’t look like he wanted to answer any more questions, but Alizel’s curiosity was too strong. “Excuse me, sir. But might I ask who is going to be passing through?”
He stood there, immobile. Alizel wasn’t sure if he had heard his question or not, but suddenly Uriel was beside him.
“See for yourself,” he said, pointing.
Alizel turned, and saw not one angel, but several. They weren’t the common angels either, but Cherubim, twelve in front. The Cherubim had four wings instead of two, two large ones coming out of the back, plus two smaller ones underneath. The smaller set often wrapped around the front, obscuring their white sash and golden C. There was no mistaking any angel of this order. They had been
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created with four faces too. Alizel wasn’t sure why, but the rumor was that they had been given this blessing so that wherever they were, whatever they did, they never had to turn away from God. Even when their back was to Him, they were still looking straight at Him.
Suddenly, Alizel knew who was going to go through the Portal. There was only one being who commanded a full honor guard.
It was the Father.
God Himself was going down to the Universe.
What could He be doing down there? Alizel wanted to rush into the Portal and follow Him, but he knew Azazel would never allow it.
God was everything at once, glory burning so brightly and intensely that Alizel couldn’t even focus his gaze on Him, let alone describe Him. Raging fire, blinding light…none of those even came close to capturing the essence of who He was. He was really a They, different personas blending and separate all the same.
His essence passed through, and the Portal closed itself behind Him, and Alizel sighed, resigned to the thought that whatever God did down there would be closed off to angels for all eternity.
Or…so he thought. “Watch.”
Alizel felt a shiver run through him as God suddenly spoke. The insides of Heaven opened up, allowing the angels to see everything happening, even though they couldn’t go down to the Universe itself.
Everywhere at once, God didn’t travel to Earth. He simply filled the Universe and was there. The angels watched as he made His presence known in the fertile lands of the Earth, all of the creation moving under His essence.
He moved next to some of the more intelligent mammals, gathering troops of them together. They moved towards their Creator, obedient but unknowing. Alizel still marveled at the creatures that had evolved by the natural laws God had set down in the world. They had even developed primitive intelligence, the ability to solve problems and work as a unit. But they were still nothing more than neurons responding in deterministic fashion, given their inputs of accumulated experience. A bird that flew in the wind was no different than a leaf that blew in the same wind. A primate that made a tool
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was no different than a beaver that made a dam. If any of the animals were conscious, it was but an illusion.
All that was about to change in a big way.
“Come,” God said to one of them, “Come and have life.”
He breathed on the animal, and something changed in his eyes. His movement became more purposeful, his intelligence greater, his body just a shade heavier. Alizel didn’t know what was different, but he saw him in a different light. It almost looked like there was an angel inside of him, interacting with him by pushing electrons through the brain, causing thoughts.
“You shall be Adam.” God said, as the new creature looked on in wonder. Alizel thought him new because although he still looked like the others, there was something fundamentally different about him. God turned to Adam’s mate and said “And you shall be Eve.”
It seemed like such a simple thing, really. But that’s the way things were with God. He could do grandiose things like creating an entire intricate natural world, and His tone of voice was calm and relaxed. He was never in the least bit pretentious. After all, who would He have to impress?
He continued on, breathing on several more of the mammals and giving them each the new intangible essence. Yet, as Alizel watched Him the amazing thing was that each one was a little different than the rest. There were similarities to be sure, but each essence was distinct, just as each angel was different from the others.
So God had created the humans in two steps. First He had created a world where soulless creatures could evolve, and then He had taken the extraordinary step of fusing a component from the Realm of Spirit to their bodies. Alizel remembered his conversation with Eleleth and Abbadon in the garden. Could the souls now enter Heaven? Why had God done it this way?
“I have given you life.” As He spoke, they all looked in wonder at themselves, as if seeing their arms and legs for the very first time.
“Who are you?” the one called Adam asked. “Who are we?”
“I am the Lord, your God,” He answered. “And you are My people. I have formed you, and give you dominion over this world that I have created.”
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Adam looked around in wonder, as if seeing everything around them for the very first time. He looked at Eve, and a big smile came across his face.
“What are we to do here?” she asked.
“I have given you everything that you need,” God answered. “The trees produce fruit for you. The animals produce meat for you. The rivers give you abundant water to quench your thirst, and the fields will bring forth grain when properly tilled. You shall have everything you need to live here. And I shall love you.”
God came back through the Portal and Azazel closed it after Him. Though He was present everywhere both in the Universe and in Heaven, God had never entirely revealed Himself on Earth in this way before.
“What could this mean?” Alizel asked Uriel. From his furrowed brow and downcast eyes, it was obvious the Principality didn’t have any more information than he did.
“It’s almost like He made them like us,” Uriel mused.
“But they’re not,” Alizel replied, dumb-founded. “Look at them— they’re made out of atoms. They aren’t made out of the same stuff as us.”
Mupiel pursed his lips, thoughtfully. “I wonder if they can cross to Heaven? I mean, if Azazel opened the barrier.”
“Perhaps that’s why God forged the weapons for Azazel…” Uriel nodded slowly as if things were falling into place. After the three angels had been sent into the Containment, there had been much debate in Heaven. Had God made a mistake in allowing the weapons to be made? The idea of God doing something wrong was so foreign that most of the angels dismissed it out of hand. However, as the rebellion continued, thoughts turned to words, and words turned to heated debate. What if God had led them astray on this issue? If He was fallible, where else might He fail to protect them?
“I see…” Alizel smiled, following the Principality’s train of thought. “So maybe making the weapons was part of his plan all along. He knew that they would cause a small problem in Heaven, but they would protect us against an even greater threat.”
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“I don’t know,” Mupiel spoke up. “Why wouldn’t God just make the barrier stronger, then? Or make those new creatures weaker?” The idea of a tradeoff was new to the angels. They had never seen God do anything that would lead them to believe that He didn’t have absolute power and control over every situation.
Alizel was about to reply when he felt the call for a meeting in the Angelarch. It wrapped over his body, pulling him onward. He welcomed the intrusion. He
looked to his companions and saw that they felt it too.
“Let’s hope they have some answers…”
The stadium was more packed than Alizel had ever seen it. But this was an unprecedented event. Things were starting to happen so fast… Just centuries ago everything had been just as it always was. Angels were foolish to wish for change, he realized. Change for its own sake was no good when the life you had was already perfect.
As far as Alizel remembered, which was pretty much since the creation of Heaven, God had never left His throne. Now, not only had He left it, but He had gone down into the Universe and done something the angels didn’t understand. At least, Alizel didn’t. Maybe some of the superiors could shed some light on the whole affair.