“But something prevents me.” Lucifer drew him closer, studying Remy’s straining features.
“You meant something to the being I was,” the Morningstar stated. It was as if a door inside his mind had been suddenly opened, revealing the secret contents held inside, the experiences of a fallen called Madach.
“You believed in my repentance.”
The fingers around Remy’s throat opened, releasing him, and he swam backward through the air, away from his foe.
“For that belief you shall live,” Lucifer said, looking down at the morphing landscape of Hell. The cries of the fallen as they fought to survive drifted in the air like a perverted birdsong.
“And with this gift, I give you purpose.”
Lucifer extended a muscular arm, his long, delicate fingers splayed.
Remy felt the air around him immediately charged. He tried to escape by dropping down to the chaotic terrain that twisted and changed below, but he was held fast by the Morningstar’s will.
“You will be my messenger,” Lucifer said. “You will tell them of my return, that their best-laid plans were for naught, and that they will pay for their transgressions against me.”
The air around him began to crackle, the fabric of Hell’s reality beginning to tear.
Lucifer was opening a passage.
But to where?
“As to when, that will be for me to decide.”
The portal opened with a terrible sucking sound, and Remy found himself pulled into the blistering cold of its infinite darkness. He tried to stop himself, to hold on to the sides of the puncture made in the sky above Hell, but the pull was too great, and he slipped into the void, the final, chilling words of Lucifer Morningstar sending him on his way.
“For I have a kingdom to build.”
Remy was deposited before the Gates, the stink of Hell radiating from his angelic form.
He fell to his knees as the wound in time and space healed behind him. Eager to breathe in anything other than shadow, he gasped, taking in hungry lungfuls of the suddenly hospitable environment.
He felt the soft earth beneath his knees, the golden-colored grass that tickled the palms of his hands, the fragrant, nearly intoxicating smell of the air; it had been a very long time since he’d been to this place.
But it was impossible to forget.
A fine haze covered the golden plains of grass, but then a gentle breeze stirred, moving aside the curtain of mist to reveal the Gates. Two enormous posts that looked to be fashioned of finely polished bone, or as said some who’d managed to catch a glimpse of the magnificent sight, and remained alive to speak of it, pearl.
Remy rose to his feet upon wobbling legs, lurching forward, drawn toward the magnificent sight.
Toward the only thing that separated him from the kingdom of Heaven.
He could see it there in the distance, through the intricate metalwork that hung between the awesome posts.
Flashes of memory were stirred, and he recalled when last he’d passed through this gateway. It had been at the close of the war, and he thought it would be the last time.
He had abandoned Heaven, or more accurately, Heaven had abandoned him.
Remy stood before the shuttered gates, a glimpse of Heaven partially obscured by the blowing mist beyond them, and knew a serenity that he’d not felt in a very long time.
His Seraphim nature was calmed by the return, sedated by the sight of the golden kingdom beyond the entrance. And deep inside, a little bit more of the humanity that he’d worked so hard to create died.
He reached out, prepared to push the Gates open and stride toward the vast city of light, to deliver the message given to him by its most fallen son.
His hands had barely touched the warm metal when there was a brilliant flash and he was repelled. He lay on the ground stunned, his entire body numbed as if by a million volts of electricity. Gradually, feeling returned, and he cautiously climbed to his feet.
Have I been barred from Heaven? His thoughts raced as he again readied to approach the gateway. Is this some sort of punishment for my leaving after the war?
Off in the distance, above the spires of the Heavenly kingdom, Remy saw that it had grown dark, as if storm clouds now hung over the city and were spreading across the skies of Heaven.
But soon he realized that it was not clouds at all.
A great army flew through the sky toward him.
An army of angels.
Heaven’s air was filled with the sound of pounding wings as they approached—swarming across the sky, descending on the other side of the Gate that separated them.
“Hail, Remiel,” an angel at the head of the flock cried, the first to touch down.
He was adorned from head to toe in intricate armor of gold, as if the rays of the sun had been used to create the ornate adornment for him, and for all the angelic soldiers that landed behind him.
As the leader strode closer to the Gate, he removed his helmet, and a sick feeling writhed in the pit of Remy’s belly as he recognized this angel.
“Greetings, Michael,” Remy said, bowing his head slightly in respect for the leader of the mighty Archangels.
The Gates parted, and the Archangel strode through them. “Heaven knows of your involvement in the most delicate and dire of matters,” the warrior angel stated, stopping before Remy. “Your arrival here before the Gates, stinking of the pit, implies that a great danger to Heaven, and all of creation, has not been averted.”
Remy studied the angel before him, and all those that had descended with him from the sky. They were clad in the armor of war, a telling sign that they were very much aware of what had transpired.
“The Thrones are no more,” Remy said, watching for some sign that this was a surprise. There was nothing; the sharp angular features of the angelic warrior remained passionless. “Destroyed by the newly awakened Lucifer Morningstar.”
A violent shudder ran through Michael’s brown-speckled wings, the only sign that he was affected by this news at all.
“I suspected no good would come from their scheme,” the angel stated, obviously referring to the Thrones’ plan to remove Lucifer from Tartarus. “They used forbidden magicks to make him forget who he was… what he was,” Michael continued with disdain. “And then they made him believe he was another… another of the lowly, absolution seekers that had sinned against the All-Father.”
The Archangel paused.
“What we feared most has occurred.” The angel turned to the army that stood beyond the Gate. “But we stand ready to deal with this impending threat.”
“So it’s war again?” Remy asked, an oppressive sense of sadness sweeping over him, replacing the euphoria of his return.
Michael turned, revealing the most disturbing of expressions. The Archangel wore a smile, and there was a glint of excitement in his piercing eyes.
“War,” he repeated as he reached down and drew the sword hanging from the scabbard at his side. “For the kingdom and the glory of Heaven.”
He raised the blade high, and all those behind him did the same.
Remy’s warrior nature was aroused by the sight before him, eager to join their number, to again wield a weapon in service to the Lord God Almighty.
But there was also a part troubled by the sight, by a nagging voice from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind that warned the coming war would make the first pale in comparison.
“You haven’t learned a thing,” Remy said to the armored Archangel.
Michael scowled. “We’ve learned that the battle is never truly over until your enemies are utterly vanquished.”
“And the grace of mercy?” Remy asked.
“Mercy,” the Archangel scoffed. “You see now where mercy has brought us.”
And Remy saw exactly where it had brought them. There had been no healing since the conflict that altered the very nature of Heaven; in fact, he believed the wound caused by the war now festered with infection.