by Drew Foote
“Three other Nexuses have been severed. Baruchiel went down to investigate personally. I thought you’d want to know.”
She nodded again, her face portraying a surety of purpose that she didn’t feel. She needed to speak with Samael. Immediately.
~
The Seraph Samael, Governor of the 5th Choir and Angel of Death, held his high court at the pinnacle of the Bastion. It was an expansive terrace open to the shifting alabaster sky of Heaven, the sound of singing souls resplendent in the soft light. The ancient Seraph sat atop a simple and unornamented throne, attended by Powers and Champions.
Kalyndriel approached her lord, and knelt respectfully. Her wings were folded behind her, her gaze averted. She waited for his acknowledgement.
“Rise, stalwart Kalyndriel,” he declared. His voice was the sound of the sweetest music, a mellifluous tone. He had the most beautiful voice of all the Seraphim, a voice that could bring peace to the entire world.
Kalyndriel raised her head. Samael was tall and powerful, but simple attire tempered his obvious strength. His plain white robe and simple rope belt belied his might. The Severity of God had never been an ostentatious figure, preferring to lead with humility and temperance. His compassion had made him much beloved to his Angels. Six ivory wings fanned from his broad shoulders.
Kaly looked upon the Seraph, but Samael had no eyes to return her gaze. Although his face was the smooth-chiseled perfection that humanity could but poorly imitate, his eyes had been lost long ago during the Fall of Lucifer’s rebellion. Apollyon tore them out in a fierce struggle, and it was said the Destroyer kept them still as a trophy. Being an Angel, Samael could still see, but the silken bandage wound across hollow sockets marred his visage.
In ancient times, Samael had shared his responsibilities with his brother. Samael had been the Angel of Peaceful Death, while Apollyon had served as the Angel of Violent Death. While Samael delivered gentle respite to those weary of their burdens, Apollyon had been the spirit that delivered carnage upon the souls of man. In the end, none could have suspected the violence that Apollyon would deliver upon Heaven, in turn.
“Lord Samael,” she began. “I would have a word with you.” She rose.
Samael smiled warmly, and nodded. He raised a hand. His attendants left the terrace, leaving the Seraph and Kalyndriel to speak in private.
“What troubles you, dear one?” he asked.
“It’s about Cadmiel, and the failed Nexuses,” Kaly replied, her voice heavy. “I was attempting to discover the truth of what happened at the first Nexus, and I discovered it might have something to do with a soul owned by the Demon Barnabas.”
“Ah, yes. The one Dariel reported.”
Kaly nodded. “That is correct, sire. I found this Barnabas, and I spoke with him. He claimed that Cadmiel had already approached him,” she said. She hesitated a moment, and then added, “And Cadmiel was then slain by Makariel.”
Samael’s calm smile remained fixed. “I see. Please, go on.”
Kalyndriel took a breath. She suddenly felt very foolish. “I’m trying to figure out why Cadmiel was looking for Barnabas.”
“That’s very simple, dear Kalyndriel. I sent him to retrieve the Demon for questioning, myself,” Samael replied, his voice even and reasonable, the sound of honey.
“Ah,” Kaly said, and then paused. She frowned in puzzlement.
“Why, sire?” she continued, troubled. “I was seeing to it myself.”
Samael sighed patiently. He rose from his simple throne, the magnificent canopy of his wings trailing in the golden light. He stepped down from the dais, a vision of heavenly purity, and approached Kalyndriel. The Seraph’s face was smooth.
“I appreciate the work you have done on this matter, Kalyndriel,” Samael sang. “But I believe you have fulfilled your duties, and that no more is required of you.”
Looking at her with fatherly affection, he placed a gentle handle on her shoulder. It was warm and smooth, like sun-kissed marble.
Kaly shook her head, confused. “If I may ask … why? What is the meaning of this, Samael?”
“You may not, my child.” His voice was sad, and he looked away. “There is more at stake than you know. These are matters above your station, Avenging Angel. You are a loyal warrior of Heaven, and now I need your unquestioning loyalty.”
The air was still atop the Bastion, and it seemed as though the song of the Choirs abated. Kalyndriel stood perfectly still, gazing upon the Angel of Death. She eyed him suspiciously, weighing a terrible decision in her mind. Something was foul. Both Angels tensed, feeling the fraught atmosphere that now built between them.
Samael turned to her, his face pained. He sensed the course of her thoughts.
“I beg of you, do not do this,” he whispered.
Kalyndriel opened her inner eyes. They were not the eyes that saw sunrises and smiles, no; they were the divine instruments that dwelt within the depths of her searing soul. They were the eyes of an Avenging Angel, eyes that could see the stain of corruption. She was an avatar of truth, an embodiment of justice, and her gaze could pierce the veil of evil.
God had created her to judge, to deliver His punishment. To brand the wicked.
A terrible deceit seethed and writhed atop Samael’s skin, bubbling like a cancerous black membrane. The truth of his sin lay apparent before her judgment, a malignant boil that demanded excision. She could not see the specifics, only the stain of a monstrous evil.
Liar. Traitor. Unclean.
“What is the meaning of this, Seraph?” she growled quietly between clenched teeth.
Samael’s wings folded gently behind his back, sagging with disappointment. His composure, always so unfaltering, crumbled into ash. He shook his head regretfully. Kalyndriel saw a broken creature before her.
“You were always the best of us, Kalyndriel. The purest. The simplest.” Samael laughed sadly, a heart wrenching sound. It was a song filled with desperation, and madness. “Unfortunately for you. I truly wish things hadn’t come to this, you know.”
Kalyndriel said nothing, her gaze fixed on Samael’s sin. A wave of dread and conflicting emotions tore through her. Samael, an Angel that she had respected and followed since the beginning of time was tainted with the blackest deceit. Her world was shattered, but she could not back down. It was not her nature.
Samael slowly turned. “I’m afraid,” he said quietly. “That you must be banished from Heaven, my dear. You have no place here.”
Like a kindled wildfire, Kalyndriel’s sorrow immediately ignited into white-hot wrath. Her wings snapped open with thunderous report, her halo flared dangerously, and she was but a moment away from unsheathing her lance. Though Samael was beloved to her, she would not hesitate to fulfill her divine duties.
She would punish her own Seraph, if she must.
“You may be my liege, but you do not have the power to sever me from Heaven, Seraph,” she spat defiantly. “Only an Archangel has such authority, and we shall see what they have to say about your treachery. I have no doubt that Gabriele will be able to find the truth within you.”
“He may not have the authority, but I do.”
A voice of heavenly fire roared behind her. It was the sound of combustion given flesh, the rasp of the celestial forge. It was a voice that none could resist. Kalyndriel whirled.
Standing before her was Uriel, the Fire of God, one of the four Archangels. He towered into the sky of the 5th Choir, impossibly massive. His colossal form was clad in silver armor animated only by flickering flame. Uriel’s visage was a smooth, expressionless mask worn atop of his soul of divine fire, its shape wreathed by tendrils of his burning essence.
Rather than wings, an enormous wheel of fire was bound to his back. It slowly rotated, its seven spokes turning with the roar of an angry star. It spun with the motion of the universe, itself, the heartbeat of the cosmos.
If there was any Angel that could be said to be truly terrible, it was Uriel. He shared none of the gentlenes
s that many Angels possessed. He was a force of nature, an elemental inferno that knew nothing of compassion. He was the father of fire, and every spark in the cosmos drew its life from him.
It was Uriel who drove man from the Garden of Eden, leaving nothing but cinders in his wake. It was Uriel who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, not because he loved Man, but because his God commanded it. Humanity had nothing in common with this roaring apparition of fire, and neither did many Angels.
Kalyndriel stared in dismay. The Fire of God loomed, motionless and undeniable. He burned with an intensity that seared the eyes, but Kalyndriel’s inner vision saw far more. His flames were licked with the black of treachery, smoldering with the wet ichor of a betrayer. Edges of darkness outlined the flaring tendrils snaking from his mask.
“No, Archangel, not you…” she whispered.
“Your time in Heaven is at an end, Kalyndriel. I name you Fallen Angel.”
Uriel’s voice was grave and implacable. His wheel spun ominously, never-ending. He raised a molten hand, its palm open in benediction.
Kalyndriel felt her fury rise unbidden once more, trembling with anger like taut razor wire. It scalded as fiercely as the apparition that stood before her, betraying her. Her judgment knew nothing of fear, or of hierarchy. It burned hot and clean, a gift from her God.
“And I name you false, and traitor. Treacherous Archangel, blackest of wretches,” Kalyndriel declared, trembling. She heard Samael gasp in alarm behind her.
“Do not presume to judge me, Angel!” Uriel boomed, his voice a howling firestorm. The force of his anger buffeted Kalyndriel, throwing both her and Samael backward atop the spire. The Fire of God’s furious form roared with the violent intensity of the heavenly forge.
“My judgment is no presumption; it is my birthright!” Kalyndriel shouted, forcing herself to her feet. She stood defiantly before Uriel’s withering presence, lance in hand.
“And you may cast me from Heaven, but I am no Fallen Angel!” Kalyndriel continued, taking a step forward. “My power does not come from you, Archangel, and I have kept my faith with God. I rebuke you, betrayer!”
“Enough.”
Uriel clenched his fist with brutal finality. With a sound of shattering glass, Kalyndriel’s radiant halo fragmented into a thousand shimmering pieces. None could deny an Archangel amid the spires of Heaven.
Kaly screamed as her connection to Heaven died, writhing in a seizure of unimaginable agony. An animal groan of pain slipped from her trembling lips as she felt herself wrenched in two. Her wings spasmed, and she collapsed to her knees. She retched violently with the sensation of incomprehensible loss.
The Fire of God slowly opened his fist. The Heavens parted, and Kalyndriel fell into darkness.
~
“I’m not sure that was wise, Archangel,” Samael murmured. “She remains a threat.”
“Wise? Of course not. However, it was the only option left to us after your inept handling of this matter. I dare not strike her down in Heaven.”
Shame filled the Angel of Death’s face. “You are right, Uriel. My apologies.” He stared where Kalyndriel had plummeted from Heaven.
“It is done now, and Kalyndriel is alone. She is a renegade, no longer bound to Heaven. I will see her dealt with, and she will trouble us no more.”
Samael nodded. He slowly returned to his seat, collapsing into it with dejection. He placed his bandaged face in his hands. “I’m so tired, Uriel …” he whispered.
“As am I. That is why we do as we must.”
Chapter 11
The Price of Knowledge
“It’s time for you to read, Walter.”
Walter shook his head, his body rocking slowly. He kept his eyes tightly closed. Walter had had enough of knowledge; he had no more stomach for the things that Paimon insisted upon showing him.
Day after day, book after book. They were wicked, hateful volumes filled with horrors. They dragged him in and gleefully peeled back the skin from the world he thought knew. They laid bare the rotten soul of existence, a stinking carcass that refused to die. It was a greater torment than any he could have imagined.
Walter read of Pestilence, and he suffered beneath the lash of every malady that ever feasted upon the human form. His eyes bled, his heart burst, his lungs collapsed. He dragged himself away from the village to die in solitude. His body lie piled upon a cart that teetered with corpses claimed by the Black Plague. He felt hungry bacteria devouring him from the inside, a living cadaver.
Walter read of Famine, and felt the gnawing pain as his body slowly cannibalized itself. He was a tribe of hunters that ran out of game, slowly dying in each other’s arms over a period of months. He was a farming community decimated by drought, their corpses desiccated by desert wind. He died, again and again, each death more painful than the last.
Walter read of Hatred, and he gazed upon the boundless depths of humanity’s spite. Walter read of Fear, and he felt the paralyzing terror that defined the human condition. Walter read of Judgment, and bore screaming witness to the extermination of entire races.
He felt as though there was nothing left of him, of the man he once was. The horrors of the world scoured away his identity. He was an empty vessel filled with the viscous black liquid of despair, a syrupy amalgam of atrocity. The terrors never ceased, and his wounded mind held nothing else.
Have I ever known happiness?
He thought he had, but he couldn’t touch it; those thoughts were lost to him behind the veil of terrors in Paimon’s infernal library. Walt tried to reach out and grasp it, but his fingers closed around nothing but squirming nightmares. Happiness fled before his touch like a ghost.
Walter chased after it through darkened corridors populated by echoes. He would never catch it.
Walt knew he had been horribly, terribly wrong, though. That much was certain. He remembered the stain of his hubris. He heard his own preening discourses on the nature of existence, speaking as though he had the faintest glimpse of eternity’s truths. How wrong he had been.
What a silly human, what a fool.
To think, he had once believed he had an understanding of the vast nature of the cosmos. He had been naught but a monkey hurling his own feces, a child playing in the darkened parlor of his ancestors. The clock had finally struck midnight, however, and the shadows in the parlor were alive. They were hungry.
“I know you don’t want to read any more, Walter,” Paimon said gently. The Demon’s caring voice was at odds with the torture that he inflicted. “Believe me, I know. Open your eyes.”
The command forced Walter’s eyes painfully open. Paimon the Cruel sat across from Walter at the small wooden table. The Demon smiled, but his gaze was distant. They were in the library that served as Walter’s prison. The flickering glow of the candelabras cast a feeble light between the towering rows of bookshelves.
“Let us talk, you and I,” Paimon said. He folded his hands neatly on the table and waited.
Walt stared at him in silence. Was this some trick? Was this merely a precursor to further unspeakable torment? Fuck him. Walter would not give him the satisfaction of begging.
Paimon merely sat quietly, staring into Walter’s soul. Walter could feel the floor of Tower of Knowledge slowly sway in the ashen winds of Hell. Time slid by like a sluggish river. The human and the Demon were silent.
Walt finally opened his mouth, struggling to form words through a throat worn raw by screaming. His hands curled into fists. The word that finally emerged was nothing more than a broken sob. It was the gasp of a dead man.
“Why?”
“Why am I doing this to you?” Paimon asked.
Walter nodded.
“I do this so you may understand. Now tell me … do you understand, Walter?”
Walter shook his head. He looked down at his hands. They were feeble things, pathetic instruments without the power to change anything.
“That is correct, Walter. You do not. And that is the first step to tr
ue understanding,” Paimon said cryptically. He sounded irritatingly pleased.
“Oh, fuck off. Save your fortune cookie bullshit, Demon,” Walter managed to rasp. His eyes watered with suppressed fury.
Paimon smirked knowingly, and was silent. The Demon waited.
Walter stared at a burning candle that never dripped. He finally turned back to Paimon. “Why … is everything so awful?”
“I don’t know, my friend. I often ask myself the same question.” He paused, looking down. “I have read the same books as you, you know. And far more.”
“And you don’t understand?” Walter asked with a hint of sarcasm.
Paimon smiled thinly, and shrugged. “I don’t understand in the slightest, dear Walter.”
Walter barked a harsh, gravelly laugh. That surprised him, as he had not believed he had any capacity left for laughter. It was a sound filled with ironic despair, but it was a laugh nonetheless.
Paimon laughed softly as well, and it was a deep and resonant thing. He sighed. “Let me ask you another question, Walter,” he continued. His face grew serious, and he leaned forward.
“You understand nothing, but you understand far more than you did when you first arrived. Would you trade this knowledge for ignorance? Would you walk the road of a fool, were it less painful?”
Of course, he immediately thought, but Walter remained silent as he considered the question. Would it not be preferable to be a fool if he was free from the tremendous weight of knowledge? Nothing was worth the pain that he endured … or was it?
Walter had a difficult time remembering who he once was. He thought he might have been a man who would not shy away from wisdom, regardless the price. He thought he might have been a man who sought answers.
Was this truth, or merely vanity like so much else that sloughed away in the inferno? Walter did not know any longer.
Paimon watched Walter closely, observing the struggle playing across his features. The Demon smiled to himself; here was a worthwhile soul. It was a shame that circumstances were what they must be.