I walk back to the terrace preparing to leap back into the air when I stop. I look down on the chainmail on my bed. The remainder of my armor is spread out on the floor. I clutch the sword at my side and feel the surge of adrenaline. I must not engage in a battle with my own Prince. There has already been far too much bloodshed, but then again, this is a time of firsts.
I pick up the chainmail.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Change of Heart
WE APPROACH THE TWO STREAMS as I twitch my fingers nervously. Raphael drops to all fours and cups a drink with his hands, his long tongue lapping up as much as he can swallow before the mystical force prevents him from taking a second sip.
I follow, stooping down on my knee in front of the sweet tasting water. Raphael stands and walks ahead leaving me alone. I pause, maybe I shouldn’t drink? What if this well is only meant to be a tease to keep me coming back for more? Perhaps I am paranoid, but I only pretend to drink, lifting my hands not quite to my mouth.
The Prince threw Gabriel into a prison. I keep running it all through my mind and that makes no sense. For all the impetuousness that the Frosted exhibited during training, he was only rewarded. Now, for second guessing the Prince in this madness, he receives a punishment. None of it makes sense, but I must rise up and tell the Prince what he needs to know. I cannot afford to go silent when all of creation counts on me standing up for what is right.
The Prince sits before us. His light seems dimmer than I remembered. I drop down before him and press my head to the ground.
“You disappoint me yet again,” the Prince says. His now red flowing cape shows its black trim. “Let me warn you Michael: Salidryl has informed me of your insecurities. I will never cast someone out for having doubts, but I will reject a soldier who engages in the wrong side of my battle. That by very definition is an enemy.”
He taps his foot gesturing for me to rise. I accommodate.
“My Prince, I ask for permission to speak freely. I hope that my service has shown me to be a loyal servant of your grace. I have no greater desire than to bring you pleasure and to serve you because the Origin set you forth above me.”
He rolls his eyes at my mention of the Origin. “I have always granted you liberty to speak.”
“You have indeed. My Prince, I’m concerned that you are surrounded by those who will not tell you the truth of the battle ahead. I know from my journey toward being a warrior, that minor victories can produce unrealistic expectations for greater challenges.”
The Prince grinds his teeth. I don’t have much time to soften my language.
“You are such a powerful leader of this army,” I say. “But perhaps battling the host of heaven is folly.”
“Stop feigning this false humility. It’s always so unbecoming.”
“You have no quarrel with the Origin,” I say. “What has He ever done but treasure you?”
“But I want more,” he says. “I desire my value to come from treasuring myself, not from anything He gives me. I am tired of His pious laws and creations. He is a meddler and I want Him dispelled.”
“But you can’t beat Heaven. You and I both know that. Even more so, why would you want to? The Origin has gifted you everything. You have a host of angels, his prime planet, and his admiration and trust. You have the opportunity to stand on the fiery coals at will. Why would you possibly want to rise up like this? Control your pride.”
“Control my pride?” The Prince laughs. “It’s not pride when you truly are who you believe yourself to be.”
The Prince raises his hand.
A roar echoes from behind me, at the entrance of the Temple. I turn and four Ceremonials enter, clutching the sides of two, long wooden planks. Resting on the wood is what appears to be a large box covered with a blanket.
“You see, Michael,” the Prince says. “I’m tired of playing this little game where you pretend to be loyal to me while I pretend to find value in you. We both know the truth.”
The Ceremonials reach the front of the room and place the large cube down on the tiles. They turn and leave as quietly as they entered.
The Prince walks over to the box and stands beside it. “I have learned that the power of destruction is far greater than the power of creation.”
He lifts the fabric off of what I now see to be a cage. My breed cowers back behind the bars at the sight of the Prince who slams his hand on the metal.
“Why?” I ask.
“It’s called a threat. Sure you could go and design a thousand of these animals but does that really matter? You could never replace this one companion. You only need to feel the pain of one death and it will devastate you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think about it,” the Prince says. “When you lost Terra, your pain consumed you. You could care less whether any other angel lives or dies. You are numb from the pain you carry inside.”
“What is this all about? I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. But the Origin does. He may seem all powerful, but he has a glaring weakness. When he loses just one of his angels, it breaks his heart. Don’t you see? He in all his omnipotence is vulnerable to pain just as we are. All I need to do is strike him where it hurts: his work. And when I steal the creation from the Creator, what is he but an irrelevant relic?”
The Prince lifts the latch on the cage door and allows it to swing open. He backs up as my breed looks over at me. It puts one paw out and then peeks his head out from the cage.
The Prince, like a flash, scoops up the animal in his arms.
“I will show you my power!”
Before I can draw the sword at my side, the beast bites into Lucifer’s arm.
“Aaahhh,” he shouts, dropping the animal to the floor.
My breed runs to my side.
“Gabriel was right,” I say. “You have changed.”
“Changed?” He brings his bloodied arm to his chest as he laughs. “Let me ask you something, Michael: does any of us really change? We are what we were crafted to be. And I was given the role of the angel who would dethrone the Most High. He has no army. He has no soldiers. He stays absent from creation. I do not plan to wait until he creates something new.”
“You can’t possibly think that you can defeat the Origin. This is madness.”
“Oh I do,” he says. “The Origin creates; I have learned how to kill and destroy. He can create all day long; it’s no threat to me, only more fuel to throw into my fires.”
His words remind me of Cephus, back in the Oasis. Only instead of a Rogue speaking of the Prince, it is the Prince speaking of the Origin.
“Who were the Rogues?” I ask. “Why were they really fighting you? Why did they kill Terra?”
“There is no surprise here,” the Prince says. “Though I can see you are intent on searching for it. Cephus learned from me, here in this very court, about the Origin’s weakness. Only once he joined me in my rebellion against the Origin; he rejected my kingship as well.”
“But you can’t possibly think you will defeat the Creator of the Universe.”
“I don’t believe he will even oppose me,” he says. “His preoccupation with assigning little peons like yourself to go tinker with animals has kept him too busy to watch me at work. Also he claims to have some new plan for creation that He has yet to speak into existence. He is too distracted, and I will tell you Michael, I am not sure that the Origin has any ability to battle me when I rise up. He is a creator, not a fighter.”
“You underestimate him,” I say. “And you overestimate yourself.”
“Let me tell you what I am going to do,” he says stepping down off the platform and walking right up to my face. He stands on the green Morning Star pattern in the tile. “I will go up into heaven. I will establish my own throne above the stars of The Origin. I will be the new Origin."
He lifts his fist to his chest and breathes in deep as if he has finally confessed something that he has bottled up in his heart for a
very long time. His eyes then turn back down toward me and he scowls.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I say.
“I’ve had enough,” he says. “It’s time for you to make your choice, will you serve me or will you not? And this time, I will not extend to you the opportunity to stay neutral. You are with me or against me. For there is nothing in this world worse than a bystander.”
“I was created for a purpose. And I will abide that purpose. If I have to fight you my Prince, I will.”
The Prince draws a dark metal blade with a bejeweled hand-guard from his sheath and lifts it into the air.
This is a surreal moment. Am I really about to go to battle with the Prince himself? I wonder if he even knows how to fight as he has never really been engaged in the same training that we have. Perhaps, I will make a short deal of this, and, in his cries for mercy, he will rescind his whole mad plan.
I glance over at Raphael who has remained silent during most of this encounter. He doesn’t say a word. Perhaps, he is as shocked as I am.
“I knew from the beginning you would be disloyal, Michael,” he says. “You always have been. You refused to fight when I asked you. It wasn’t until you watched your sweet little parallel dripping blood all over my Temple Courtyard that you turned toward my service.”
How could the same mouth that utters these callous chides of my parallel have once spoken tender words of concern that warmed my heart?
“I let her die,” he says. “Because I knew it would draw you in. I could not allow an angel with a warrior’s flame to waste away as a petty Designer.”
My anger boils.
I jab my sword forward toward the Prince. The flames rise from my arms. He parries and my sword grazes his side. He looks down at the new wound. My breed and I have given him perhaps the first two he has ever received in all of his existence. He lowers his fingers toward it and lifts up a dab of blood to his mouth. He tastes it and growls.
He shouts wildly as his eyes grow bright red. His arms swing wildly, while bright light emanates from his shoulders. The luminescence grows brighter and brighter until I can barely see what is going on in front of me.
I panic in the flash of white. I can’t see anything, and I know he is swinging at me. It’s as if I am now blind in all this bright light.
I back up instinctively, just as I hear the whirl of a blade swinging my direction. It catches me in the leg, and I collapse backward onto the ground. I thrust my sword out in front of me, but I can’t tell what I am even aiming at other than a large amorphous beam of light.
All my training, all my experience in battle are worthless against him. I can barely open my own eyes.
“Aaarrrggg,” my beast approaches from behind me growling.
“Stay back,” I command but the beast doesn’t listen.
Instead, my breed froths at the mouth. Standing on all fours in front of me. His eyes narrow and his nose snorts against the light.
“The Prince of creation versus a lowly breed.” Lucifer smiles. “I suppose we all need a little target practice every now and again.”
“No,” I shout. But I am too late. My breed leaps forward into the bright light, growling and snorting.
I force myself to my feet, ready to attack.
A hand grabs my shoulder.
It’s Raphael, and he now holds his sword to my chest.
“I want you to watch this,” Raphael says.
I suddenly realize that I have made a terrible mistake trusting my sadistic co-captain.
“You forsaken beast,” the Prince cries out.
I hear whelps and growls coming from the light until my breed is flung back toward me and collapses hard onto the tile, lying limply on his back. His neck is sliced deep, and blood pours out onto the tile.
I scream out in horror, dodging Raphael’s sword and falling to the ground. I grasp my breed with my hands and press my head to his chest. His breathing slows and his heartbeat is about to cease.
I lift my breed up into my lap and look into his eyes. They grow dark and cloudy now.
“I am so sorry,” I say. “You were a true and loyal friend.”
His tongue licks at my fingertips one last time.
And then he dies.
I sit in stillness for a moment, forgetting the conflict. I whisper a goodbye and a loneliness descends upon me, the likes of which I have never felt before.
The brightness of the Prince dims. He looks down at me, almost grinning. Raphael laughs and spit drips from his plump lips.
“I have no pity for you,” Raphael says. ”I merely wanted to be here on the day that you were cast into the Prince’s dungeons where you belong.”
Raphael begins to beat me.
I do not fight back.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Punishment
TODAY IS THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of my confrontation in the Oasis. Or at least, I think it is, it’s hard to gauge days and nights in this place. Always dark, never light. Nobody ever enters or leaves. The only sounds are the screams of others who are caged but after a while, they all learn the pointlessness of desperation.
I stare into the void with nothing before me but my memories. I recall the texture of Terra’s tears as they fell on my fingertips on the night we watched the aurora together. I hear Gabriel’s voice when he confessed that he lost his parallel. I remember the look on Uriel’s face when I let him die. I feel the resistance of flesh and bone when I pierced the flesh of Cephus.
Perhaps, I only bring myself more pain by reliving these events but then again, here in an angelic dungeon, the only thing I have is my thoughts. To not engage my mind is to accept the madness that whispers to me.
My quarters are tight, a cage forged to my exact specifications. There is about a finger’s length of space above my head. The walls along the sides extend far less than the lengths of my arms when they are withdrawn. My wings ache from the prolonged compression, like an intense itch I can’t scratch. They will never spread out again.
This cage hangs from a thick metal chain. It rocks and sways when I move, giving the impression that I am not standing on solid ground. The constant shifting adds to the horror.
But it’s not the accommodations that torment the most.
It’s the “never” that’s the worst part. As an eternal being, unsusceptible to aging like the beasts I design, my body is not naturally inclined to travel toward the escape of death. I could stare out into this darkness forever and feel the ache in my wings for all eternity.
I am alone.
The stone on my neck is gone, which is actually a relief. I feel so ashamed that I ever took joy in anything that he gave me. The Prince, or I suppose I should just call him Lucifer, wars against all that is good, and therefore he is evil.
I recall the pine box that Terra gave me.
Did they take it from me? A chill runs through my veins as I clutch my chest, feeling for the cube.
By some miraculous mercy, it is still hidden in the sack by my side.
I run my palms along the smooth wood. The carved shapes are duller, but they still jut out against my skin. I long to look upon it in the darkness, but I can’t.
I told myself that I would open this gift once I avenged Terra. But after I killed the Rogue, it felt so empty. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Perhaps, maybe a part of me felt that opening the box would mark the very last surprise Terra could ever give to me. It would be our final moment together. But now, here I am in this dark prison and I will never be able to look upon whatever it is that she left me.
I think of my breed. A loyal friend and companion who marks yet another tragedy in a long list of friends who fell along the path of this journey. I remember the way his head used to nuzzle against my leg and his soft eyes. He didn’t deserve to die like that.
Lucifer is a vile and terrible angel. How could the Origin have been so deceived? Then again, I too was deceived. I regret ever referring to him as a “prince”.
What righ
ts did he have to this Earth?
A red glow lights the small encasing as I grow angrier and angrier. I smile realizing that I can now look upon the wooden box. I will open it.
I pinch the top of the box between my fingers. I pull it off and find the gift inside, a musical instrument. Five hollow wooden tubes bound together in descending order from longest to shortest with a reed. The craftsmanship is stunning.
There is a message inscribed on the side of the tubes.
“Two from one.”
I lift the ornate pipe to my mouth and feel the glossy finish. Much smoother than the one I lost in the Rogues’ encampment. I exhale and listen to the melody as it plays. Within moments, I find myself forgetting the darkness around me and I am lost in the beauty of the song.
I remove the pipe from my lips. The silence feels smoother and more peaceful.
“Thank you,” a voice shouts from beside me.
“Praise the Origin,” shouts another.
“Please play some more,” another voice says.
“You have brought joy to more than just me,” I whisper to Terra in the darkness as I lift the pipe back to my lips. I play it to the best of my ability. As the notes fill my ears, I see an image of the Origin, working diligently, crafting the angel who I believe to be the most beautiful of all creation. Forget Lucifer, for me it was Terra.
The Origin must have looked down on her delicate features and trusting smile and felt a sense of joy. I wonder what it felt like when he heard her laugh for the first time. I suppose it couldn’t have been much different than when I listened to her voice at that first moment.
I find myself thanking the Origin in my heart. Despite being imprisoned in this dank prison cell, he gave me something so special. I’ve spent so much time hating others for taking Terra from me that I have forgotten to thank the Origin for the time I had with her. I may not have appreciated his gift then, but I make a conscious choice. I will thank him now. Every note I play is a conscious prayer, a song to Him of gratefulness.
Eternity Page 20