Heaven's Night

by Harry Aderton

  “No, you won’t. One more bout with your brothers may be your last. Sariel, even you have limitations. You are attached now to your astral body and it limits you. If it fails, you will die. And it is failing. You push it too hard. You need to take care.”

  “What then do you propose?” I snapped more harshly then I intended to. “That I stay here within this tower?”

  “No, of course not,” said Avenel. “There is another way. I can feed you strength from my own body and will. I am of the wizened and the source of my prana is plentiful, I can assure you. It can sustain you for a long while.”

  I frowned. “Isn’t that siphoning?” I recalled the twisted form of the Regent champion, Meresin, who had siphoned prana from his victims.

  “Not if I give it you willingly. But, once I open the channel from me to you, I can neither control the flow nor shut it off. Only you can do that.”

  “So if I pull too much …”

  “You’ll kill me.”

  “But you are of the wizened. You have not fallen so far yet. How can you die?”

  “We can all die on this sphere. Lucifer has made it so with his corruption.”

  I shook my head. “Then the answer is no.”

  “Then I’ll give you mine,” said Requel. “I would give him my life gladly.”

  “My love, you know I could never accept it,” I said.

  “It matters not,” interjected Avenel. “Requel’s strength cannot sustain you. Only mine can. Take my strength, Sariel. You’ll need it.”

  I shook my head. How could I do this? I closed my eyes once again, pulling more prana from the ether. It trickled in and strengthened me, but I would need more, far more, to deal with the likes of Asmodeus, Beelzebub, or Lucifer. Did Avenel have enough? Prana poured from her like waves of heat from a flame. When I gazed at her through spiritual eyes, she glowed like a star.

  I exhaled sadly and nodded. “Do it then, Avenel.”

  She closed her eyes. A moment later, I felt a new source of prana. All I had to do was take it …

  I reached for it. Prana flooded into me. My hair tingled and my back arched. Power flooded through me. I felt … whole.

  Avenel collapsed. I bent to her side and helped her into a chair. “I am sorry.”

  She waved me off. “You are strong, Sariel. Far stronger than I had anticipated. I’ll be fine. I simply had not expected to give so much so quickly. There’s far more where that came from, I assure you, but the reservoir does have an end.”

  “Thank you, Avenel.”

  “Thank me after we’re victorious otherwise it won’t be necessary. We’ll all be dead.”

  * * *

  I emerged onto the ramparts of Iobel’s tower, strapping my helm into place. The sounds of ballistae and catapult fire boomed in the distance. I had expected to see holes in the defensive formation of our floating angelic warriors, their shields held high to form the protective dome above out city. All was intact. Sections of our dome rippled as catapult fire battered into them but none broke through.

  I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses. A score of large missiles arched through the sky towards us. The ballistae missiles were made of wood and iron and had been set aflame; the catapult missiles were made of stone the size of small houses. I waited for the inevitable impacts. To my surprise, none came.

  As each missile neared our dome formation, it abruptly veered away at the last moment. Some collided in mid air, exploding into harmless chunks, others simply dropped or sailed away. A few impacted, but those were typically a fragment of one that had exploded.

  It was Haniel’s doing, I was sure of it. Only he and his brothers could divert the missiles in time before impact. I smiled in quiet appreciation. I reached out with my senses and found them immediately. They hovered outside the dome, three against the aerial assault. I could also sense their growing fatigue. I was certain our enemy could too.

  I summoned my chariot. It appeared in a flash, the fiery steeds pawing and huffing. My shield lay within as did a bundle of spears fastened upright against a side wall.

  I climbed in and turned towards Dirael. “Are you with me?”

  “To the end, my lord.”

  “Good. Stay close. Let’s teach these fallen a thing or two.”

  Upwards we spiraled, the warriors making a hole for us to pass, and headed towards Haniel. He floated above the dome at its apex, his hands held out wide. His arms darted left and right. Where they moved an incoming missile would change course and follow abruptly.

  I sailed past him into the darkened sky. The clamor of catapult and ballistae fire in the distance sounded like a thunderstorm. A large rock hurled towards us. I reached out and mentally grabbed it but I did not deflect it. Instead, I altered its path into a wide arc and whirled it like a sling. I aimed it at the fallen armies high above. It whooshed through the air and blasted into them. Dozens of fallen fell from the sky like helpless birds.

  I plucked another large rock and a fiery missile from the sky, flinging both around in a wide arc, and unleashed them at the fallen stratosphere. It exploded into them, hurling them backwards and a fracture of daylight broke through the fallen darkness. I snatched more missiles from their trajectories, two then five at a time, and whipped them upwards. Holes opened up letting in shafts of daylight that speared through the gloom. More fallen plummeted.

  The bombardment abruptly ceased. The silence was deafening. I hovered over our dome, breathing heavily. I had used much of the borrowed energy from Avenel already, more than I intended. I was alarmed at how weak I felt.

  A rapid series of booming thunderclaps shook the night, the sound of hundreds of catapult and ballistae fire launching as one. A cold dread filled me. Fiery missiles sailed and streaked through the darkness

  “Get down below!” I told Dirael. I closed my eyes, tracking the missiles with my senses. Some came in fast, too fast, others hurtled slowly in tall, lazy arcs.

  I gathered my will quickly. I couldn’t pluck them all from the sky individually. I needed another way.

  I drew my sword and began to whirl it in large, sweeping circles over my head. But in my mind, it wasn’t the sword I whirled, it was the wind.

  A breeze picked up. My arm swung faster. My eyebrows creased in tight concentration and I felt my muscles tighten about my shoulders and neck. I sensed the missiles coming in quickly now.

  I increased my speed. The wind whipped up and gusts swirled around me. Faster I spun my sword. The missiles closed in.

  I let out a cry but my voice could not be heard. It was lost in the tempest whirling around me. I fed it more energy and it swelled in monolithic size. It began to rise in the sky, towering and dancing like a thing alive.

  At my command, tendrils of air extruded from it, snatching missiles in mid-flight before pulling them back into its embrace as if it were some giant octopus retracting its tentacles. I willed it to pull in all the inbound missiles. Hundreds of hurled rocks whirled about me in the swirling tempest. Around and around the debris tumbled, smashing apart, spinning faster and faster.

  I pointed above me and unleashed them all.

  The missiles spewed forth from the maw of the tempest like an erupting volcano. Just as quickly, the tempest vanished but the rocks shot upwards in a great spreading cone.

  Rock and debris exploded into the fallen, pounding into them on a massive scale. Thunderous blasts and screams rent the air. The missiles shredded them as if they were paper. The devastation was terrifying. Great holes seemed to magically appeared as the fallen simply disintegrated, opening up giant patches in the sky. Daylight poured in like liquid gold.

  The sky rained fallen.

  Bodies like black droplets fell by the hundreds, the thousands, as they pattered to the ground far below.

  Exhausted beyond measure, I gazed longingly at the patches of daylight through the torn sky. But the light revealed just how many countless fallen were left. They massed in the sky like floating mountains.

  My heart fell.
Despair, dull and crushing, shattered my resolve. Was there no end to their number? Could I never do enough? A helplessness washed over me.

  I clenched my jaw. I could do more. Had to do more.

  I pushed the dark mood away and replaced it with rage, cold and resolute. I always knew the fallen would win in the end. Who could possibly stand against their infinite numbers? But, by God, their numbers would be far less before this day was done.

  Fallen bodies still rained down around me. But in that moment, I didn’t want mere rain.

  I wanted a deluge.

  I focused on low lying clouds drifting lazily among the fallen in the patches of open sky. I mentally added heat to it, raw and intense. I pictured them no longer as serene clouds but as floating islands of steam, white-hot and blistering.

  The wails began. I had never heard its like. A low shrill that rose and spread into a holocaust as if the very heavens screamed. Tens of thousands cried out in anguish.

  I could feel the scalding clouds stripping away skin and flesh and sanity from those trapped within. Panic seized them. They hammered into one another, desperate to get away from the searing heat. Violence and anarchy broke out as they shoved and smashed and fought each other in their bid to flee. It looked as if the darkened sky boiled and churned. Then it began to melt away.

  The fallen began to plummet.

  I watched grimly as they fell in droves, a hailstorm of black and steaming corpses twisting and spiraling down. They fell all about me, a downpour of the dead. The stench was overpowering, both acrid and greasy, and clung to my nostrils.

  Bloated bodies crashed to the ground below, bones crunching and flesh splitting in a waterfall of endless corpses. The terrible sounds were loud and sickening.

  The angelic ranks in our defensive dome above the city locked shields, each shield overlapping the one next to it to resemble tiles. The dead slammed against them in great number, the slapping of their bodies and clash of their armor loud and sharp, and they slid harmlessly away.

  The devastation I wrought revolted me. I swallowed hard against the horror and my stomach recoiled.

  I closed my eyes. Indignation and humiliation emanated from the countless fallen above me. Their hatred knew no bounds. They screamed for blood.

  Lucifer’s infinite legions attacked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The fallen, in their madness for retaliation, had no discipline in their attack. There was no order. No strategic plan. Nor did they need one.

  They descended in mass. Like grotesque thunderclouds too obese to stay aloft, they split open and emptied.

  Down they came. Their ululating cries deafening. The flapping of their wings sounded as if a hurricane raged.

  They slammed into me. I cried out, my voice lost against their wails. At first I resisted, like a tall and determined oak against an avalanche, but their sheer number swept me aside. I had not the strength to withstand them, my previous attacks had taken too much from me. I felt weak and vulnerable. Like a leaf I tumbled, spinning and twirling.

  I was ripped from my chariot, my steeds pawing and snorting as they were smashed aside. They disintegrated into sparks like a crushed embers.

  Maces and war hammers smashed into my chest and helm. Spears and swords glanced from my armor but only a few bit through. Fallen tore at my wings and I felt them rip against the strain.

  “Hold him!” a voice snarled.

  A huge fallen Dominus loomed, eyes red, teeth bared. He drove a serrated sword at my face. I twisted desperately, barely evading the blow, and used my remaining strength to tear free from those holding me.

  Downward I shot, quickly outdistancing the fallen behind me. The ground rushed up but I didn’t slow. I pictured the solid ground to flow like water. I plunged into the liquid earth and sunk into its depths. My momentum carried me down through the fluid rock and clay before I slowed. With powerful strokes I swam through the dirt, legs kicking, arms reaching and pushing and pulling the earth until at last I turned to the surface.

  I burst upwards in an eruption of rock and debris. I landed hard on my back and sucked in a lungful of air. Breathing heavily, lights danced before my eyes.

  I lay within the fortress. Above me, our defensive dome formation rose up but it was bent and dented in sections as if struck with mighty blows. Alarmed, I instantly reached out with my senses. The dome was under pressure. Impossible pressure. The sheer weight of the massed fallen pressed against it. The fallen didn’t even fight with sword or spear.

  They simply pushed.

  Thousands of fallen were crushed against our dome, their souls released into the ether, as the weight of those above ground them down. They simply didn’t care if their own died. In their madness, only their frenzied need to tear us down and destroy us mattered.

  Down the fallen pressed on our warriors, their weight as vast as the sea. Our angelic forces, stalwart and strong beyond all measure, braced themselves but the outcome was inevitable. Our dome formation began to crumple.

  They pressed our armies towards our own lofty towers, grinding them relentlessly against the pillars of stone. Towers burst and angels died, their crushed bodies vanishing, their shields dropping from the heights like falling petals. Bridges and skyways bent and collapsed, the falling debris smashing buildings and houses down below.

  But miraculously, the dome held. It was dented, bent, and torn but it had not yet caved. In another few moments, that would change.

  Avenel! I need your strength! I pulsed mentally. I reached for her prana and it surged into me. It was less than I hoped for, but my head cleared and my wounds healed, if only partially. I shot into the air.

  “Haniel, join with me!” I raced into the center of the collapsing dome and felt his mind touch my own, our strength uniting. “Jehoel and Zaphiel, I’ll need your strength as well!” I grew stronger as the two other Seraphim joined me, my awareness extending.

  I pushed my mind further, and spoke to the remaining angelic forces.

  “Join with me brothers and sisters!Join my mind. Unite our strength as one!” A hundred and thirty thousand minds and wills joined mine. It wasn’t siphoning. I didn’t draw their prana into me. Instead, we all united in a universal mind. For the briefest of moments, we were one.

  I envisioned our united will within a single entity, the weight of the world on our shoulders pressing us down. The weight was too heavy for us to push away as long as our legs were locked in a standing position. We needed slack and room to move. I imagined our legs bending.

  Our formation buckled for just an instant. We descended another fifty feet. More towers snapped and crumpled under us and fell. Fortress walls fractured and buckled. More angels perished.

  But it was the slack we needed. I imagined our legs bunching, ready to …

  “Push!”

  As one, we heaved. As one we threw all our remaining might, the total and combined strength of all our angelic orders, into a singular, powerful shove.

  Our two unstoppable forces collided. For the briefest moment, nothing happened. But one had to give.

  The fallen erupted in a massive explosion the likes of which I had never witnessed. A plume of fallen as wide as our city shot upward thousands of feet into the air in a tremendous column. The sudden upswell created a vacuum, sucking endless fallen into a vortex that formed a great ring of dead bodies around the column. Near the top of the column, the fallen corpses dispersed and scattered in a great mushroom cloud before cascading back down like blown dust.

  The connection between the angelic army and myself severed. I found myself dazed and plummeting before I spread my wings to catch myself.

  As if a thunderstorm had passed, late afternoon daylight flooded the landscape. I blinked against the brightness of it. Black flecks soared high, the bodies of fallen scattering in the winds like a storm of crows.

  “Attack!” cried Shoel, pointing to the retreating fallen. “Guardian class, Thrones, Cherubim engage!”

  I stared numbly as our f
orces took the offensive for the first time. I had not the strength to join them. I simply watched in amazement.

  Haniel pulled up alongside me and took my arm. “Come, my friend. Take a moment’s rest. Let the others fight for a while.”

  * * *

  I sat with Haniel, Shoel, Dirael, and Iobel in our war room in Iobel’s tower, one of several structures left unbroken. I had checked in on Requel and our son. They were fine, for the moment. I was glad to have Avenel watching over them.

  “This respite won’t last long,” said Shoel. “Even now the fallen are regrouping outside our reach and darkening the day once more. They’re still millions strong.”

  “When they come, we’ll be ready for them,” said Dirael. I smiled sadly at his fervor. He alone still believed we could win. I would not strip that away from him.

  “How many did we lose?” I asked.

  Iobel grimaced. “Approximately twenty-five thousand.”

  “Still more than enough to reform our shield, however,” said Shoel.

  Our dome formation was in place once again. Against all odds, we held off an army a thousand times our number. But how long could we last? A day perhaps? Two at the most?

  As if reading my thoughts, Haniel broke in. “It is only a matter of time.”

  I sensed his frustration. I felt it too. “It appears so.”

  “What then do we do with the little time we have left?” he asked.

  “We fight on!” said Dirael. “What else is there?”

  “Agreed,” said Shoel. “Morale is good. They will not break anytime soon.”

  “Unless Lucifer or one of the other once Archangels join the fray,” Haniel countered then faced me. “Which begs the question, where was your order during the last battle?”

  I shrugged. “I am wondering that myself. Mephistopheles must still be incapacitated otherwise he would have made his presence known. He alone has proven the most formidable so far. I don’t know what Beelzebub and Asmodeus are capable of. Perhaps they are biding their time.”

  “Is it too much to ask that the mountain you dropped on Mephistopheles killed him?” Iobel asked.