Dancing On the Head of a Pin rc-2

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Remy wanted to look away from the horrific scenes of warfare as they were played out but found himself held by the sight.

  Is it possible that it was even worse than I remember? he thought, watching as the two opposing angelic forces clashed upon the golden fields of Heaven, and in the open sky above.

  Remy stepped over the bodies that littered the ground of the entryway into the Heavenly chamber, drawn closer to the images of the Great War and the end of a way of life that had been denied him forever because of it.

  The battle depicted upon the curved wall of the vast chamber went to white, the searing brightness nearly blinding. Remy lifted a hand to protect his sight.

  A face suddenly appeared upon the wall, the resplendent light emanating from around his beatific features. Remy had forgotten how beautiful the Son of the Morning had been, which made what Lucifer had done all the more offensive.

  He had been God’s favorite—the chosen son—the first of them all.

  Remy felt an undying anger overtake him as the Seraphim was stirred by the sight of its most hated enemy. And deep inside, buried beneath the fury, his human nature bowed its head in sorrow over the enormity of what had been lost on account of this being.

  Deciding that he’d already wasted too much time on things long past, Remy was prepared to go deeper inside the formidable structure, when his eyes caught sight of movement at his feet.

  What he believed to be the corpses of dead fallen angels shifted suddenly, giving off the illusion of life. Remy spread his wings, propelling himself back out of harm’s way as something emerged, exploding with a bloodcurdling shriek up from beneath the bodies of those vanquished in battle.

  It had once been one of his own, an angel of Heaven, but now it appeared as something else. Its robes clung wetly, the gore of those slain in combat making the angel raiment stick to the body like a second skin.

  Through the scarlet taint Remy suddenly recognized the face of Uriel, the warden of Tartarus.

  His wings had once been snow-white, but now were flecked with crimson. Eyes huge and wild, the warden surged at him, a sword forged from the elemental forces of Heaven crackling in his hand. Uriel raised his weapon but paused in his attack when he saw that it was a Seraphim there before him.

  The niggling voice of the Pitiless pistol screamed, to be used inside Remy’s head; he could actually feel the metal of the trigger gently caressing his index finger, attempting to seduce it into action, but Remy stayed his hand, forcing the weapon down by his side.

  “I’ve come to help,” he told Uriel, watching the bloodstained expression turn from one of absolute panic to one of surprise.

  Slowly Uriel lowered his weapon, head tilting from one side to the other as he studied the angel before him. It was as if he truly didn’t believe his eyes.

  “I’m Remiel,” he said, hating the sound of his angel name. After all these centuries, it still sounded wrong—dirty—coming from his mouth. “Of the host Seraphim. I’d learned of your situation here and have come to—”

  He never got the opportunity to finish the sentence.

  “Lies!” Uriel screamed, his blood-covered face twisted in unabated fury. He came at him then, sword humming like a swarm of angry bees as it cut a swath through the air.

  Remy quickly moved out of the way. If not for his wings propelling him back, the arcing blade would have split him in two.

  The angel was beyond talking to, the madness of this place—of Hell—having taken root. He was lost to sanity.

  The warden’s blade buried itself in the cold floor of the prison lobby, passing through the bodies of the dead that littered the ground, as insubstantial as smoke.

  Again the ornate pistol clutched in Remy’s hand begged to be used. It showed him how deadly it could be: multiple blasts of gunfire, multiple victims falling to the weapon’s voice.

  So many victims.

  “So many lies,” Uriel bellowed, tugging his blade free. “We believed it was over—the indignity perpetrated upon us by one of our own—but it was all a lie.”

  The warden charged with a roar, the blade in his grasp sizzling as it cut the air in search of Remy.

  Remy leapt above the sword, his wings taking him up toward the cathedral-high ceiling. From the corner of his eyes, he saw projected upon the wall of the chamber the final act to the most disturbing of dramas, the powerful Morningstar brought down by the legions loyal to the Almighty.

  He saw Lucifer driven to his knees, wings shackled in restraints of gold. There was a calmness in the features of God’s adversary, an expression of peace that spoke nothing of defeat.

  Of surrender.

  Uriel had taken to the air, his blood-colored wings pounding as he erratically came at Remy.

  “How could we have been so blind?” the warden wailed. “So complacent? Did we learn nothing?”

  The burning blade descended. Reflexively, Remy lifted his gun hand, halting the sword’s arc with the barrel of the old-fashioned pistol. The weapons collided with a blinding flash, and Remy was thrown back by the powerful concussion.

  Landing in a roll, he quickly got to his feet, blinking his eyes furiously, attempting to clear away the sunbursts that blossomed there, obscuring his sight. He was ready for Uriel’s next attack, but the warden was nowhere to be found. As his vision began to clear, he saw that he had been knocked into another area of the prison by the force of the blast.

  He was in an enormous chamber composed of the same icy material that formed the structure of Tartarus itself. It reminded him of the inside of a hive, the walls honeycombed with circular cells. He was dwarfed by the vastness of it all, and it made him feel incredibly small.

  As he was drawn farther into the room, Remy could see inside the honeycomb-like apertures. He could not help but stare in rapt amazement at the frozen shapes of the fallen angels within. Some of the chambers were open, what had once been contained inside having been freed.

  How many have the Nomads managed to release? the Seraphim wondered, nearly overwhelmed by the sheer number of cells that dotted the walls. This was an awful place, and Remy now understood why Uriel had not followed him in here.

  The fallen were very much alive within their icy cells, reliving their moment of betrayal over and over again for an eternity.

  Or for as long as He deemed fit.

  Standing there, surrounded by all this pain and sorrow, Remy again questioned the concept of a loving God. And cursed how far Lucifer had caused them all to fall.

  The voice of the warden drifted out from somewhere in the room, and Remy realized that he no longer held a weapon, the Pitiless pistol having been lost in the explosion that had propelled him into the prison chamber.

  Uriel flowed from the darkness, his Heavenly sword poised to strike.

  Remy whirled to meet the attack, his hands catching Uriel’s wrist, preventing the burning blade from falling.

  The warden was screaming, insane ramblings of a mind shattered by the magnitude of his failure. What had happened here would affect all reality, all the way from Earth to the gates of Heaven itself.

  Wings beating mercilessly in combat, the two took to the air.

  The Seraphim wanted to destroy its foe, to vanquish anyone who dared stand between it and the task that it had taken on.

  The Morningstar cannot… will not be released.

  Perhaps it was his humanity that still held on by a thread, but Remy could not bring himself to fully succumb to the angelic nature’s thirst for death. He found himself holding back, acting only in defense against Uriel’s shrieking onslaught.

  The angels flew up and backward, their struggling bodies colliding with one of the cells, the impact so great that it shattered the icy covering that sealed the fallen angel inside. The fallen came suddenly awake with a scream.

  The disgraced creature of Heaven wailed its displeasure as it pushed away the shattered fragments of its prison to grab at them. With ragged, clawed hands it reached out, grabbing hold of Remy’s wings, at
tempting to pull him inside the cell to share in his misery.

  Remy beat his wings furiously while attempting to fend off Uriel’s attempts to kill him.

  The warden took advantage of this distraction, freeing his hand long enough to thrust his sword, the burning tip penetrating the breastplate of Remy’s Heavenly armor with a flash and the stink of ozone. Remy roared, driving an elbow back into the face of the Tartarus prisoner, and with his wings freed, furling them tightly against his body, allowing himself to drop like a stone.

  The pain was incredible, a burning sensation spreading across the flesh beneath his armor. Disoriented, Remy spread his wings to slow his descent, but landed hard, rolling across the icy surface.

  The pain beneath the armor intensified. On his knees he tore at the straps holding the armor in place. It came away in two pieces, clattering to the ground. Remy gazed at the wound, the flesh around the point of penetration angry, a mottled redness starting to spread across his shoulder and down onto his chest. If not taken care of, the infection caused by the wound could prove deadly.

  But this was the least of his problems at the moment, listening to the sounds of flapping wings growing closer.

  The warden was coming.

  He sensed the angel bearing down on him, and spun around to confront the latest attack.

  Uriel dropped, gore-spattered wings fanned out to slow his descent, his sword raised in preparation to strike Remy dead.

  Remy tensed, isolating the pain in his shoulder, hoping that he had what it would take to survive this moment.

  Two gunshots rang out, tearing away a portion of the angelic warden’s face, a third removing the top of his head.

  The angel dropped down atop him, dead weight driving him to the ground. Remy struggled out from beneath the corpse of the warden, his hand searching for the sword Uriel had dropped. He found it, shrugging away the angel’s body as he rose in a crouch to deal with this latest obstacle.

  The fallen angel Madach stood in the shadows, a strange golden light emanating from the Pitiless pistol in one hand, and from the Japanese sword clutched in the other, forming a kind of halo around his bedraggled form.

  “If we want to get this done, you better follow me,” the fallen angel responsible for setting this chain of events in motion said.

  Remy gripped Uriel’s sword tighter as he watched Madach turn away to be swallowed up by the darkness of Tartarus.

  He had no choice but to follow.

  Come to find out, not only did Madach now have the Pitiless sword and the Colt, but as Remy followed him into the inky blackness, he saw that the fallen angel had—sticking out of the back pockets of his blood-soaked jeans—the twin daggers as well.

  “How?” Remy called after him.

  They were descending a winding path made of ancient yellowed ice. The walls around them—these too were peppered with the honeycomb cells, some with prisoners still intact, others shattered and empty.

  Madach stopped briefly, turning around to speak.

  “It’s weird,” he said with a laugh. “Seeing you that way.”

  He pointed at him with the barrel of the gun.

  “This place changes you,” Remy said, painfully aware of his angelic form. His shoulder throbbed, the infection caused by the sword wound continuing to spread. “And not for the better.”

  Remy wanted to be human again, but he wasn’t sure if that could ever be possible again.

  Something had happened to Madach as well. Remy could see that this wasn’t the same fallen angel that he’d first come in contact with. There was an air about him, the way he carried himself.

  Almost as if he were somehow comfortable with the Hellish environment. As if he belonged.

  “The weapons,” Remy said eyeing each of the pieces in the fallen angel’s possession. “How did you end up with them?”

  Madach gazed down at the weapons, an expression on his face as if seeing them for the first time.

  “I came through Karnighan’s passage into the middle of a battle,” the fallen said, eyes glassy as he recounted how it had been. “The Sentries were fighting Nomads just outside the entrance.” He went silent, continuing to admire the accursed weapons he’d acquired.

  “I don’t remember,” Madach then said, managing to pull his gaze from the Pitiless to stare at Remy. “I’m not sure how that’s possible, but the next thing I knew, I was inside Tartarus… and then I found you.”

  “And the gun,” Remy said, his own gaze fixed upon the weapon that he’d lost in his struggle. There was a part of him that wanted it back, that wanted to hold death in his hand again.

  Madach looked at the gun with loving eyes, rubbing a smudge of soot from its body against his pants leg, smiling when he saw that it was clean.

  “It’s as if I’m drawn to them,” the fallen said. “Maybe it’s because they know that I’m the one responsible for all this… for freeing them,” he said.

  Remy could just imagine what it was like for Madach, having them in his possession, chattering away inside his head, the images of past violence and death they were so eager to show him.

  The air became filled with an echoing, pounding sound, like the one he had heard earlier that had drawn him inside the icy citadel. The vibrations that followed shook the very foundation, rubble raining down on them from above.

  The sound was coming from somewhere below.

  “It’s the axe,” Madach said, his voice barely audible over the powerful noise.

  It was the one weapon of the Pitiless that Madach had yet to recover, and the fallen turned away from him, hurrying down a descending path that led deeper into the bowels of the prison.

  “What is it?” Remy asked, following.

  “We have to hurry,” Madach answered. “The axe is being used. There isn’t much time.”

  The words were enough for him to ignore the aching pain in his shoulder, and to drive him on. If they were too late the end result was more than he had the ability to comprehend at that moment.

  They rounded the corner, their movements illuminated by the eerie yellowish glow that emanated from inside the still-occupied fallen-angel cells.

  A memory from Remy’s human past flitted through his mind’s eye: a Sunday visit to the New England Aquarium with Madeline. She loved the penguins, perfectly happy to skip any of the other exhibits to watch the tuxedoed birds waddle about in the artificial environment that imitated their natural habitat.

  He was suddenly, profoundly disturbed, the memory vivid right down to the penguin-house smells, but there was something horribly missing.

  Madeline’s face.

  Her features were blurred, as if she’d moved unexpectedly as a picture was being taken—or as if the memory of her was slowly fading away. It was something that he couldn’t tolerate, that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow to happen. As his humanity was squelched, pushed deeper and deeper into a smaller and smaller place inside him, his memories—the memories of his human life—were gradually being discarded, seen as useless by the angelic nature that had at last regained dominance. These fragile human remembrances were not what were needed at this time.

  Now it was about the battle, the fighting skills, the fury. These were the memories that would allow him to vanquish his foe, to serve the Lord God Almighty to his fullest capacity. There was no reason for compassion, kindness, and love in a place like this.

  His humanity was dying, and Remy realized that it wouldn’t be long before all the precious experiences and memories that he’d collected over the centuries he’d lived as a human would be gone.

  But there was no other choice. If this was the sacrifice required of him to prevent this most heinous act from happening, then it was the price he would have to pay.

  He returned his focus to the job at hand, descending farther and farther into the bowels of Tartarus. The air had become even thicker with despair, the lower levels where the least repentant of the Morningstar’s minions were kept.

  He did not want to look at the
m, curled fetal-like within their small, icy cells, but could not help himself. Remy had known these creatures. No, it was Remiel who had called them family, his brain quickly corrected. But nonetheless, they had been part of his world at one time, and here they were confined to an eternity—or more—of suffering for their actions.

  Remy had tried not to think of what had occurred after the rebellion had been thwarted, after he had left Heaven for the earthly plains. He knew it would be bad; how could it not? The Lord of Lords—the Creator of all things—had been challenged by His own creations. How could He not punish them?

  Remy knew it would be bad, but he never imagined anything like this.

  They rounded yet another corner, the pitching of the floor beneath their feet making it ever more precarious as they descended deeper and deeper into the prison’s lower depths.

  From the corner of his eye, Remy believed that he’d seen movement from inside one of the cells. His gaze moved over the frozen wall, looking for what he’d seen, and he was about to dismiss it as a trick of the poor light when a section of cell wall to his left suddenly cracked, sounding like the snap of a bullwhip, and then exploded outward.

  Remy and Madach reared back, immediately on the defensive as they were showered with razor-sharp fragments of prison wall. At first he believed it to be more of the fallen angels escaping, but he quickly came to the realization that it was something much bigger, as even more of the wall crumbled and gave way to reveal multiple Tartarus Sentries pouring into the winding corridors, locked in furious combat with recently escaped fallen prisoners.

  The Sentries roared through their blood-streaked helmets, unleashing the full fury of their Heavenly weaponry as they attempted to beat back the prisoners that attacked them.

  They were like locusts, swarming through the jagged break in the wall, attacking the guards in a frenzied rage. The Sentries swung their crackling swords wildly, the burning blades decimating their enemies with every swing, flaming body parts strewn into the air, but still they kept coming.

  The Sentries’ attempts to defend themselves grew more frantic as the fallen numbers continued to grow unabated. Soon Remy could no longer see the giants, their armored forms covered in writhing bodies slick with the grime of confinement in Hell.