by A Y Beltran
All the attention in the room shifted to Emerald.
“What does your investigation show, Emerald?” Michael said.
Emerald breathed a heavy sigh. “There has been an increase of mist abduction in Ether.”
“Allow me to interrupt this depressing conversation for a short moment,” Gabriel said. “I just want to clarify one thing first because I felt like I was missing the point here. But isn’t it the purpose of the mist is to claim those who are dying and to keep the angels from learning about their mortality?”
“Yes, Gabriel. Now tell us what you have in mind,” Michael answered.
“I’m just thinking because Earth has also experienced a great number of people dying.”
Ariel gave Gabriel a pointed look. “Is their death intentional or natural?”
“Well, I like to believe that it is natural, and so I thought the increased number of death among the angels is natural as well. Otherwise, I may be forced to reconsider my early assessment.”
“Let’s not muddle our own problem here with what is happening on Earth,” Uriel said. “If we investigate the mysteries with the preconceived notion that they are connected, then we run the risk of contaminating the evidence.”
“I don’t think we are still on the early stage of the investigation when both Sapphire and Emerald here have given us the details. I believe what is left for us to do is come up with a deduction,” Ariel countered.
“I have one,” Gabriel answered. “The mist has developed a personality and has been ravenous about claiming angels.”
Michael knew Gabriel was merely joking about it but the idea had merit.
“Losing angels or even just one angel should not be taken lightly,” Jopiel said, glaring at Gabriel.
“Then let’s go back to believing that both mist and the Great Riddle are malfunctioning,” Gabriel said. “Let’s call Metatron then to fix it. Where is he, anyway? He should be in this meeting.”
Raphael sighed and faced Michael.
“We need to consider the fact that most of these unusual phenomena coincided with the presence of this mysterious godlike entity. If we solve this mystery, then it might lead us to the answer of the rising death among angels.”
“I’m sorry to disagree with you, Raphael. But Sapphire and I went to see Fide to determine all the angels born in Ether and matched it with the information we gathered from all the academy attendees. We discovered that the abduction has been happening long before this godlike creature appeared in Ether.”
Michael frowned. “What are you saying?”
Emerald glanced in Sapphire’s direction.
Sapphire cleared her throat. “What Emerald is hesitant to say is that there has been a great number of angels who are absent in Ether. Whether they were taken while in the academy or in the angel cities does not matter anymore.”
Michael frowned. “How many?”
“Half of the entire population of angels,” Sapphire answered.
Murmurs of confusion echoed in the room.
"We need to call Metatron," Ariel said. "If there is one archangel here who knows what is going on, it is him.”
Michael touched his temple. His face mirrored hurt, pain and betrayal. If this was true, their deaths were on his hands.
He had failed them.
He had failed his brothers.
He had failed his angels.
He had failed his gods.
CHAPTER 20
Damien found himself outside of his house. He knew that he was being kept in the dark about the real meaning of the ancient language he discovered hidden in the stone and the message Archibard gave him. Twice in a row, he had been privileged to be the bearer of a message whose meaning he was not privileged enough to know. How ironic was that?
But what further upset him the most was waiting for him in the house. Ali left him a message that Archibard was taken by the mist. He closed his eyes as he imagined the last time he saw Archibard. My friend, will I ever see you again?
He massaged his temple and decided to continue his rumination inside his domain with a nice glass of energy juice. He entered his house and felt the warmth flood his face and every inch of his exposed skin. While summoning a glass of kalaskig juice from his kitchen, he levitated himself with his feet crossed. When the juice arrived, he grabbed it and took a couple of gulps and then let it float. When his nerves settled down, he resumed his contemplation.
If the mist truly chose its victim like an entity with intelligence, then what would be its criteria? Its patterns? Its motive? Why did he take Archibald? Did it have something to do with his latest findings? The more questions he asked, the more enthused he was in searching for the answers. Angels thrived in the answer-seeking quest. So Damien was not going to sit and wait for the answer.
It seemed to him that the behavior of the mist somehow really resembled that of the Great Riddle. So which came first, the Great Riddle or the mist? According to his record, the mist had already existed long before the Academy was even built.
He called Ali via orb-streaming and told him to meet him at the tenth house of the Academy. He had a bad feeling about this case, but he would face it head on, the same way he faced his trials in the Great Ordeals.
The House of the Great Ordeals was a house of illusion. It would read your mind and would design its structure based on what you feared most. So how would you prepare yourself from the onslaught of illusions? By arming yourself with real memories. Damien put the necklace made of Memor energy around his neck. This way, the house would not be able to trick him. He had learned his lesson and learned it the hard way. Kanya.
Damien met Kanya at the first house and she became his companion. He fell in love with her, but, when he was taken by the Great Riddle to this house, he thought he would save her if he could answer all the riddles correctly. He did answer them correctly and he was rewarded with the truth.
He saw Kanya again, but only to say goodbye before she exploded into pieces.
An illusion. The answer was—
‘Your friend was a mere illusion,” the voice of the Great Riddle echoed in the hall.
The memory hurt still, but he had learned to live with it.
And then something just clicked in his mind, a detail that he had missed before. Why did he forget about it? Probably because he was so emotionally distraught that time that whatever it was he saw he erased it in his memories. But he did not erase them all. He merely transferred his memories to his…
He touched his necklace. I could bring the memory out through the Memor energy. He summoned the Memor energy from his necklace and addressed it to show him that one specific memory.
It took only a moment before the scene was played in front of him. But now he could see the details he had forgotten. Before Kanya exploded, her eyes turned red. Archibard’s verse reverberated in his mind.
‘The brilliance is stronger in the morn, but shrouded in the eternal fantasy of descending not from its amber thrown.’ Immortality is a fantasy that we create, yet when it is time, we will burst in deep ruby.’
He huffed.
Death.
Death was the lesson that the academy was trying to teach. So there it was. He had found the answer.
“So death,” he said to no one. “Death is the answer. So where is my reward now?”
“The truth.”
He turned around to see his friend Ali or at least what bore the face of his friend. If this were Ali, he would not look at Damien as though he was not a longtime friend. If this were Ali, he would not look at him with malevolent in his eyes. If this were Ali, he would not have the smile that made the hair on Damien’s back stand up.
Ali's voice echoed in the garden. “Where do angels go when they die?”
His heart beat hard against his chest.
“Where’s Ali?” he asked.
“Ali is now where you believe the missing angels are. And you, Damien, can now claim your prize. I’m giving you the chance to go where Kanya went.”
Damien didn’t think twice, he flew away from the angel disguised as Ali. The walls of the maze were so high that flying vertically could render him both visible and vulnerable, so he flew horizontally, turning from corner to corner. He grabbed a few kalaskig fruits he flew by and crushed them in his hand. He summoned the blue energy and turned the kalaskig juice into a cloak. He then hovered over the side of the wall that had thick shrub and enshrouded himself with the cloak he created. The cloak made him invisible.
The shrubs and trees were quiet, undisturbed. But its stillness was broken when a flicker of light materializing out of nowhere much like what Damien saw Gabriel do when the archangel opened a portal. The being disguised as Ali passed through it. Like a predator looking for his prey, the being scanned his surroundings with his palm up as though he was measuring any discrepancy in the level of energy in the area. Then with a grin, he slowly sauntered directly to the spot where Damien was hiding.
The creature clawed the cloak and cast it aside, revealing Damien to him.
“Hello, Damien.” He then grinned, his teeth sparkling as brilliant as his eyes.
Damien's eyes widened. His ichor blood drained out of his face. Right here before him came another revelation.
“You’re an archangel,” he whispered.
“I am the archangel of death.”
A sudden force pierced through Damien’s core that his breathing became labored. He screamed in pain, but he could not hear his voice.
“Excuse me?” The voice echoed, providing him a little respite from the agony.
It was temporary at first until the pain completely disappeared.
The archangel of death was gone too.
CHAPTER 21
I made myself a living torch again and scanned my surroundings. There was a bright light ahead of me so I went to investigate.
“Excuse me?” I said unsure of what I was witnessing.
A very brilliant angel was holding the other angel captive with his gaze. A red glow was bursting out of the captive angel. The brilliant angel whose radiance was terrifying yet mesmerizing shifted his gaze to me. His eyes sparkled like a pair of stars bursting with radiant energy.
“What do you need, fledgling?” His voice thundered.
“I’m looking for the Great Riddle,” I said. I stared at him defiantly.
“Oh, he’s waiting for you. Right. NOW!”
An energy force gripped me from behind and tossed me up like I was nothing but a rag doll. I was unconscious even before I hit the ground. And when I opened my eyes again, I was in a cloud of mist.
Uncertain as to what this place was, I started walking, leaving a trail of footprints behind. I encountered no mountain, no hill, nor any kind of mound. All were perfectly smooth and even until I stepped on it, making dents the shape of my feet.
Right when I was ready to believe that I must have been in different kind of Limbo where I would be walking on endless sand, I stumbled upon a colossal temple as white as a moonstone, floating in the middle of a glittering lake. Since there was no bridge for me to use, flying was my only way to get there. But before I reached any higher than ten feet, the sand stirred and then swirled like a vortex. I almost screamed in sheer fear when it transformed into a giant creature with a torso of a human, a handsome face of an angel, and a haunch of a lion. A pair of gigantic eyes stared at me, and out of its mouth words were spouted out:
“Who is older than creation?
Beauty is its consumption.
It engulfs all to nonexistence
Where light’s beyond redemption.
Yet it spits out into existence.”
The sand stirred again and transformed into another giant creature. But this time, the creature had five fire-breathing dragon heads with a human torso and gigantic human arms. Its haunch was of a horse with winged hooves. Two pairs of non-angelic giant wings sprang out of its back.
It was a terrifying sight, one I preferred not to ever see, not even in a nightmarish dream. This led me to think—what if I was merely having a nightmare?
I screamed when the creature moved toward me and encircled my entire body with its giant hand.
“Answer!” the beast with a haunch of a lion hollered, and the ground trembled. This one seemed to be the speaker while the other one whose grip on me was tightening every second was its lackey.
My mind scrambled for the answer. I analyzed the riddle piece by piece. It consumes beauty, eats all to nothing, light is nowhere, but from it comes life? I remembered reading somewhere about a black hole believed to consume everything, not even light could escape from it. But it also spit out all it consumed. It would be literal if I answered black hole.
One of the dragon heads peered closer bringing its fiery red eyes up-close, it was breathing hot on my face. Would my skin melt? Then the creature opened its mouth. What is it that consumes all the beauty around? When the hailstorm of flames rained down, I countered it by throwing an energy shield.
My sight started to get blurry as the monster held me, squeezing me to death… soon I would see nothing. And that was when it dawned on me. When the beast opened its huge mouth again, I screamed—
“Death!”
Time stood still. Everything stopped. The grip loosened, and the monster was engulfed back to the ground. The other that gave me the riddle disappeared as well. Unable to muster any strength to fly, I fell and landed on the sand with a thud.
It took me a few minutes before I was able to stand up and several more before I was able to fly.
I descended at the temple’s threshold made of glittering blue diamond stones. I willed the door to open. To my surprise, it answered my bidding.
I entered into a high-ceiling yet an austere-looking hall: no throne, no furniture. There was nothing here but a vast space, which reminded me of the verse I read at the academy. It was the one authored by Archibard, whose verses were some of my favorites. I remembered it said:
To invoke no doubt or escape a suspicion,
He hides his secret in simple exposition.
Laced with clarity and dignified monotone
And a fortitude of the sturdiest stone.
But even if the truth is perfectly hidden,
It shines through the holes of the walls, darkened.
My interpretation of the verse might be wrong, but it was still worth trying. But there were two ways this could go: either by absorbing all the light or covering my eyes with a dark veil. The latter seemed easier and would not drain me out of navi. So with mental fortitude, I summoned the bendable blue energy and flattened it to form a thin sheet. I made it dense enough to appear dark. Satisfied, I placed this darkened energy in front of my eyes and with it examined my surroundings. To my left, highlighted by the trapped light, was a door. I passed through it and came out into another chamber.
The chamber had walls adorned with glittering gemstones and blue turquoise floor. At its center was a huge circular pool of crystal clear water, and at its right was a colossal elevated throne. I peered into the pool and images swirled in the water like one giant plasma TV screen. This was like the looking-well at the garden of the House of Terrestrial Knowledge except that it showed not the lives of the mortals, but of the angels. It momentarily occurred to me that I might be inside the house of a god. This was a temple after all.
With the sheet of dark Blo energy still blocking my vision, my gaze swept across the hall. To the farthest right, another door glowed from the wall.
The other side of the door was a chamber full of crystal-like orbs floating the way the stars were in the vast space. Murmurs prompted me to examine the inside of the orb. And when my hand touched it, I was immediately assaulted by a presence, unlike anything I ever felt. It's like the energy at its purest form. Then a surge of emotions shot into me, ran through my veins and controlled my heart and mind. I laughed, I longed, I cried, and I mourned. Tears poured down my cheeks.
“Over here,” a voice said.
Reluctantly I left the orb
and the followed the trail left by an energy signature.
“Closer. To your left.”
And indeed to my left was an orb where its occupant was visible. It was a male angel with a reddish glow.
“You’re crying?” the male angel asked. His voice was gentle and soothing.
“Who are you?” I asked, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
“Ah, everyone knows me. I speak in riddles. I thrive in riddles—”
Then I chimed in and together we said, “Riddles are around us. I only use words to describe them.”
“You’re Archibard! I read your books in the academy!”