“But it can be made better,” Suroth urged.
Remy shook his head. “No, the war is over.”
The Nomad leader stood a little bit straighter then, removing his hand from the bullet wound in his shoulder.
“Not over,” he said, just as Remy sensed movement behind him.
The fallen prisoners of Tartarus spewed from the nearby tunnel mouth. Remy spread his wings, attempting to take flight over them, but there were many and they moved too fast. They gripped his ankles, his legs, pulling him down into a sea of them.
“Only a brief interlude before the final act.”
From between desperate, clawing fingers, Remy watched as Suroth moved closer to Lucifer’s pall, and to Madach lying broken before it.
The fallen moved like a single organism, preventing Remy from raising his arm and firing the gun. It wasn’t long before it was wrenched from his grasp, disappearing somewhere into the mass of them.
“It will be the dawning of a new angelic age,” the Nomad said, kicking away the samurai sword that the injured Madach was straining to reach. “The Creator surpassed by His creations—order brought to a universe in the throes of chaos.”
Suroth reached down, picking Madach up by the throat and hauling him into the air.
“He’ll be proven right,” Suroth said, pulling Madach in close to speak into his ear. “And the Lord God Almighty will be forced to bow before a new and glorious master.”
From beneath the overwhelming weight of the fallen, Remy watched as Madach’s hand fumbled at his back pocket, slowly withdrawing one of the Pitiless daggers that had managed not to be lost in their violent struggles.
Still dangling from the Nomad’s grasp, Madach struck, the arc of the blade directed toward Suroth’s throat. But the Nomad leader moved faster, the Pitiless axe dropping from his grip as he captured Madach’s wrist before the blade could bite.
Suroth twisted the dagger from the fallen angel’s hand, and tossed Madach away.
Suroth studied the blade.
“Amazing to think that this was crafted by one of His special monkeys,” he observed, admiring the craftsmanship of the piece. “I seriously doubt a Heavenly craftsman could have done better.”
He brought the blade closer to his ear, closing his eyes and listening to the voice of the weapon.
“It’s waited a very long time for this,” he said, “to at last be reunited with its master.”
And with those words, Suroth attacked the case, digging the tip of the dagger into the imperfection that he’d cut in the face of the sarcophagus. Again and again he jammed the blade into the stone, digging and twisting the metal, breaking away sections of the stone lid.
Remy watched, horrified, as the broken pieces of the coffin fell to the ground. He struggled in the grasp of the fallen, but their grip on him was firm. They were sapping his strength, their voracious number feeding on his inner light.
All he could do was watch.
The knife wasn’t doing the trick fast enough, and the Nomad tossed it aside, going in search of something to quicken his work.
Having already used the axe, Suroth reached for the katana.
Madach screamed out, throwing his broken frame across the blade.
“Don’t do this,” the fallen angel begged.
Suroth extended an arm, using his magickal abilities to yank the injured Madach up into the air. The fallen still clung to the sword, his face twisted with the agony of his injuries.
“Please don’t,” he pleaded. “If it starts again… if the war resumes, all the pain and suffering we went through… it’ll all be for nothing.”
The Nomad leader approached the fallen, who hung in the air, grabbing the hilt of the sword and ripping it from his grasp. “Think of it as a precursor to victory,” Suroth said, admiring the blade before, with a wave of his hand, he cast the begging fallen aside, sending him flying through the air to land in a shattered heap across the chamber.
“All the pain and suffering is fuel for what is to come,” Suroth said, gripping the hilt of the Japanese sword in both hands. “A victory in the making.”
He spun around with a blurred swiftness, the sword blade cutting into the surface of the sarcophagus with an explosion of fiery blue.
Still held in the grip of the escaped Tartarus prisoners, Remy flinched, as if the sword had bitten into his own flesh. He watched with disbelieving eyes as more pieces of Lucifer’s pall broke away.
Remy tried one last attempt at breaking free.
“Suroth!” he screamed, giving it everything he had, flexing his wings with enough force to temporarily toss off the fallen, allowing him to achieve flight.
He had only one thought inside his head: to stop the Nomad leader. He hurtled toward Suroth, at the last second, spreading his wings, using the sudden resistance to slow his progress and drop to the ground. The Nomad spun toward him, sword in hand as Remy grabbed for a weapon, snatching up the Pitiless axe.
“Of all of you, I thought you were the one that would understand our plans,” Suroth said, attacking with the skill and ferocity of the ancient samurai.
Pitiless metal struck Pitiless metal, arcs of hissing energy exploding out from where the weapons kissed.
“I understand them just fine, Nomad,” Remy said, swinging the axe wide, hoping to drag the razor-fine blade across his enemy’s midsection, severing him in two. “The problem is, they’re completely insane.”
Suroth jumped back and sprang into the air. Remy watched as, with a cry sounding of both pain and pleasure, the angel sorcerer unfurled wings that had likely not seen light since before the war in Heaven. They were impressive things: a dark, almost chocolate brown, with a texture that reminded him of velvet.
“To what do we owe the occasion?” Remy asked, springing up to meet his foe in flight.
The Nomad seemed almost euphoric, his powerful feathered appendages beating the air.
“The celibacy of flight has come to an end,” Suroth stated, reveling in each and every flap of his mighty wings. “I fly for all my brothers now.”
Remy rushed the Nomad, raising the axe to his shoulder, ignoring the intensity of the pain radiating from his infected shoulder wound.
Shrugging off his happiness like a cloak, Suroth met his attack like the warrior that he was, the millennia of not using his wings seemingly having little effect upon his aerial combat skills.
The Nomad was just as ferocious in the air as he was on the ground, driving Remy back as he lashed out with the Japanese sword. Avoiding the blade’s bite, Remy cast his gaze up toward the chamber’s vast ceiling. Leaping above the Nomad’s attempt to separate his head from his body, Remy flapped his wings furiously, soaring up to the chamber’s highest regions.
As he had hoped, Suroth followed.
On the roof of the chamber, resembling the teeth of some enormous mythical beast, there hung huge dripping stalactites. A quick glance below and he saw the Nomad leader leering up at him, his eyes glistening with a madness that would not be satisfied with anything other than Remy’s death.
Remy flapped his wings all the harder, increasing his speed, seemingly on a collision course with the ceiling fangs. Straining against the increasing pain in his shoulder, he lifted the Pitiless axe, swinging the razor-keen blade into one of the hangings of ice as he passed alongside. Darting between the chunks of falling debris, Remy struck at the next, and one after another, huge pieces of the ceiling ice rained down on the ascending angel.
At first Remy thought his efforts had failed, the Nomad leader able to maneuver through the falling rubble as he continued to ascend. But one of Suroth’s powerful wings was struck by a large chunk of ice, sending the Nomad leader spinning into the path of other pieces of debris. It wasn’t long before the Nomad leader plummeted to the chamber floor.
Remy dropped, following the rain of debris to the chamber floor. He hovered just above the ground, searching for Suroth’s body, imagining it buried beneath the tons of ice. Bodies of fallen angels w
ho had been killed by pieces of the falling ceiling littered the ground. He could see others peering out fearfully from patches of shadow, having escaped their brethrens’ crushing fate.
He doubted it would be long before they were again drawn to him.
Touching down, Remy suddenly realized how weak he was, his legs barely able to support his weight. He dropped to his knees upon the ice, looking around the chamber.
His eyes touched upon the body of Madach, lying bloodied and twisted upon the ground, protected from the falling rubble by Lucifer’s pall.
Remy pushed himself to stand, stumbling over the shattered pieces of ceiling ice to reach his reluctant partner in this insane endeavor. The battle-axe slipped from his grasp, but he did not bother to retrieve it. He lowered himself to the ground, pulling Madach into his arms.
“Hey,” he said, giving the fallen a gentle shake. “Are you still with me?”
Madach’s eyes flickered open, looking into Remy’s fearfully.
“It’s all right,” Remy reassured him. “I think we might’ve actually averted the disaster.”
Remy chanced a look toward the sarcophagus; though large chunks were missing from its surface, none of the blows had actually managed to break through to the inside.
He felt Madach’s body stiffen in his arms.
“No,” the fallen angel stated, shaking his head. “No, it’s not all right at all.”
The explosion immediately followed upon Madach’s words. Remy watched as the blood-covered form of Suroth rose from the rubble of the broken ceiling.
Steam wafted up from his soaking robes, his features twisted in a combined grimace of rage and agony. In his hand he still clutched the hilt of the Pitiless katana. The blade had been snapped about midway down, but Suroth had still managed to hold on to his weapon.
Twisting away from the still-thrashing Madach, Remy scrambled for the battle-axe. Maybe this was what Hell was for him, one countless battle after another, feeling his humanity slipping away inch by inch.
Suroth opened his mouth to speak, his jaw hanging crookedly. It looked quite painful as he forced the words from his mouth.
“With the end… I bring about the beginning,” the Nomad croaked and extended the sword, pointing the broken blade at Remy.
Remy tensed to fly and was shocked when Suroth changed the direction of the blade, pivoting to point it at the sarcophagus.
Snaking arcs of angelic power emerged from beneath the angel’s wet and tattered robes, tentacles of magick that snaked down the length of his arm, flowing into the hand that clutched the broken sword.
A blast of angel fire, far stronger than anything the Nomad had conjured yet struck the front of Lucifer’s personal prison.
The chamber was filled with a searing blue light, a magickal energy continued to flow from some vast reservoir within the Nomad leader.
Remy knew what was happening, and that it was now too late to stop it.
Suroth was sacrificing his angelic life force and adding it to the magick his kind had mastered so many millennia ago. The once-mighty Nomad leader had begun to wither, his body mass dwindling away to nothing before Remy’s eyes.
Lucifer’s pall had begun to glow white, the intense heat radiating from the stone prison causing the moisture from the melting ice to evaporate, filling the chamber with a roiling steam that made it nearly impossible to see what was happening.
Remy was drawn to the sarcophagus, flapping his wings aggressively to disperse the hindering mist. He was at least three feet from the pall when the magick pouring from Suroth abruptly ceased. A thunderous blast followed as the case exploded, lifting him off his feet and tossing him through the air.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Knowing that the unthinkable had occurred, Remy stood.
The steam had begun to fade, a roiling layer of fog undulating like something alive close to the chamber floor. He moved toward where the stone coffin had once stood, broken pieces now scattered about the floor.
As he moved closer, he saw kneeling amongst the fog and rubble, the form of a man. Remy froze, staring at the shape that suddenly stood and turned to face him.
It was Madach who stood in the remains of the sarcophagus.
Remy’s angelic instinct was immediately on alert. Something is wrong—horribly, horribly wrong, he thought as he strode closer, ignoring the pain that attempted to cripple his body.
Standing beside Madach, Remy scanned the ground, finding only the broken pieces of the Morningstar’s imprisonment.
Lucifer was nowhere to be found.
Remy felt their presence just as the screaming began.
Horrible shrieks and wails echoed through the prison chamber, and he turned toward the cries of misery.
The Thrones hovered in the air, their round, roiling bodies crackling with repressed Heavenly power. Tendrils of humming energy leapt from their bodies, lashing out at any and all who dared come too close.
The fallen screamed as they died. They came en masse, unable to stop themselves from rushing toward the creatures of Heaven, hands outstretched, desperate to once again touch the light of the Almighty.
As the fallen were killed, their once-divine forms exploding into clouds of ash, the Thrones paid little attention to their demise. All eyes—each and every one of the large, piercing orbs that covered the seething masses of power—were fixed upon Remy.
He could feel their gazes burning into his flesh and then he heard their roaring command.
“End his life.”
Their voices were overwhelming, like every sound in existence—the beautiful and the harsh, the melodic and the earsplittingly painful, all combined to give them voice.
Remy immediately dropped the battle-axe at his feet, bending forward, covering his ears with his hands, though it did him little good, for the Thrones spoke inside his head as well.
“I… don’t understand,” Remy cried. It took every bit of strength he had remaining to stay on his feet.
“Do as we command before it is too late,” the Thrones cried. It was like having an atomic weapon set off inside his skull.
Still bent over, Remy looked up into the multiple eyes of his tormentors, squinting through their radiance as he attempted to understand what they wanted of him.
“I don’t…”
The orbs of divine power surged closer, tentacles of energy moving across the ground, bodies of dead fallen exploding to drifting bits of nothing at their pernicious touch.
“There was always a fear that something of this magnitude would occur,” the Thrones announced. “So he was removed. Placed where he would no longer be a threat… where he could do no harm.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Remy screamed, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth. His nose and ears were leaking from the Thrones’ assault, and he wanted it to stop, but most of all he wanted to understand.
“He was never supposed to return here.”
“Tell me who you’re talking about!” Remy cried, lurching toward the emissaries from Heaven.
“There is no time!” the Thrones wailed, one of the snaking appendages of fiery energy touching something on the ground and hurling it at him.
Remy caught the object, surprised at the sudden wave of familiarity he experienced on contact. He gripped the pistol tightly in his hand, the familiar voice of the weapon present inside his head again.
Kill him!
The eyes were looking past him, focusing on the object of their obsession, and Remy slowly turned to gaze at the pathetic form of Madach. The fallen angel stood slump shouldered, his body beaten and lacerated, his clothes hanging from his broken shape in bloodstained tatters.
He seemed to be in a sort of trance, staring down at the shattered remains of Lucifer’s pall.
“Him?” Remy asked, turning back to the Thrones. “You want me to kill Madach?”
The Colt became euphoric, not because of the why or whom it was to be used upon, but because it had
the opportunity to do what it had been created for. It urged Remy on, telling him in a hissing voice like radio static to do as he was told.
Remy ignored the Pitiless, waiting for some sort of answer, something that would make sense of the murderous act that the Thrones were demanding of him.
And then Madach began to chuckle.
Remy turned away from Heaven’s emissaries to look at the fallen angel.
He was hunched no longer, standing perfectly straight, with his hands hanging down at his sides.
“Madach?” Remy questioned, not seeing the humor.
“It’s all clear to me now,” Madach stated, smiling so wide that it seemed to split his face.
“Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!” the Thrones shrieked inside his head. Through eyes tearing with pain, Remy watched Madach.
“I’m free,” he said, his eyes glinting a golden yellow.
A million questions filled Remy’s head, but he knew that there wasn’t time for a one of them.
The wounds—the cuts and abrasions—that the fallen had received during his tribulations in the underworld had begun to glow. An eerie white light starting to seep from somewhere inside him.
No longer trusting Remy to do what they asked, the Thrones made their move. Their spherical bodies began to glow like miniature suns, as they merged their masses to form one enormous globe of eyes and fire.
A tentacle of fire grew from the burning surface, lashing out like a whip. Remy barely avoided the ferocious attack, his wings smoldering with the intensity of the heat as he leapt from harm’s way. He rolled onto his back, extinguishing the unearthly fire eating at his wings.
Shielding his face and eyes, he peered through the searing brightness, barely able to make out the shapes of the sunlike Throne and its enemy.
Questions raced through his mind as he watched and waited for the inevitable outcome.
Then the horrible screams of the divine erupted in the air.
Remy crawled to his feet, stumbling back, trying to escape the oppressive sound that was exploding all around and inside him.
It was the Thrones. Somehow, the Thrones were screaming. There was a burst of light. Remy reacted instinctively, looking away just in time, before his eyes could be burned black in their sockets. When he turned back, through vision obstructed with dancing black spots and expanding circles of color, he saw the most disturbing of sights.
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