Hope's Light

Chapter 24

by Erisian

Book 6

 

If you have yet to read the saga - the tale starts here:

Into The Light

Hope you enjoy!

 

Chapter Twenty-Four - Leap

 

When I was a teenager, I once made the mistake of tossing uneaten candy into the plastic bin besides my bed. During a hot summer’s night, up through the floorboards small black ants had acted on the report of whichever scout had discovered the bounty, and all swarmed the can.

They also hadn’t stopped there.

It had been especially toasty and dry that season, desert winds removing all humidity to torture everyone’s sinuses into cracking and bleeding, and under my bedsheets additional scouts discovered a dark, safe, and damp new area - all thanks to my nightly sweat. Thus they invaded in full.

Waking up to that took awhile, there in the early hours before dawn. Occasional tickles crept across the skin, starting on the arms and back, then rustling hairs on the legs. While still floating mostly asleep I’d tossed and turned, idly reacting to the slight sensations, mindlessly scratching at dream’s interruption. Until eventually I’d awakened enough to find myself absolutely covered in moving black dots, triggering an immediate leap from the bed in an adrenalin-fueled madcap dance of ‘Get ‘em off! Get ‘em off!!’

As perceptions realigned after the shift away from the troop transport, it felt uncomfortably like that. Except this time the multitude of tickles had latched on as strong webs of steel holding me fast.

“She arrives!!”

Vision and more unscrambled only to discover the webbing as being other than from some big-ass demonic spider. I floated high within a wide space, with massive bundles of these thin silver ribbons streaming from below and above sticking to hair, skin, and glowing feathers - and each pulsing with need to feed on the energies coursing through my spirit. Arms were pulled wide by the threads, while legs were wrapped tight, and the current pair of wings were stretched taut.

Gripped by the desperate need of millions of trapped souls.

Instinct to rip free screamed even as it was checked by the knowledge that doing so could damage those connections, damage all those souls.

Thirty feet below, outside the intricately prepared sigils and circles acting as conduits to each and every building within Dis, stood a white-cloaked crowd all staring up in awe at the angel they’d summoned and bound. As the leader in front dropped to knees in supplication, so did the rest.

“Our saint! Our savior! The Grace of the Rock has arrived!”

Oh no.

The ribbons began to bite and claw under skin’s surface, eagerly and mindlessly hoping to pull as much of the Light as possible back to spirits starved-beyond-rationality. With a flash of insight, I saw them.

I saw them all.

Each and every soul used to stabilize the thousands of high-rise towers in Dis, soul-forged to grant anchor to each beam and buttress, all the steel and reworked obsidian firestone. Mindlessly installed into floors, walls, and ceilings, maintaining the integrity of the city entire. With the loss of Samael’s connection to the realm, they groaned under a burden beyond their collective capacity.

And their spirits had begun to split and fray.

I found my voice. “What…what are you doing?!”

The cloaked figure in front leaned back in exultation, arms wide below the tentlike fabric. “We invoke you, oh Amariel! Oh Grace! Oh Light! Shine upon us unworthy sinners, shine upon our realm!”

As he tilted, the hood slid off - revealing a demon’s face - though his spirit contained no souls.

Instead, five eyeless sockets turned upward without sight in sheer adulation.

“Save us, oh angel! Save us from the waiting darkness! Be our lodestone! Be our anchor! Show us the way, grant us the Light, as once you bestowed upon me! Hear our prayer!”

The crowd of hundreds, souls and demons alike, gathered around the crazily complex working echoed mightily his words. “Save us!! Hear our prayer!!”

Details of the magic became clear. The language carved into floor and ceiling, glowing now with harnessed intent, wasn’t of souls nor of demons, nor even of Lilim.

No, the writing was of the angels. Drawn and chiseled as if by children with finger-paint, innocent and with broken grammar, but writ with forceful will. And within circumscribed areas artifacts burned bluish white to lend resonance to the whole.

Artifacts I recognized.

A bronze Grecian-style helmet which had kept rain from swallowing eyes upon the battlefields. A knife once tied to a staff to make a primitive spear, one used to bleed demons across plains of empty stone and ice. A blanket which had taken hours upon hours to scrub clean from spider’s ichor before allowed return to warm the bed. A pair of goggles fused with demonic enchantment to enhance vision from the tiniest of light sources, worn to guide wagon-pulling graxh around random stones and pits scattered before them. All these and more.

My items. Lost to time and abandonment, but nevertheless mine.

And through our close contact the power of the unleashed ritual wove that resonance to pull and wrap my spirit.

The chamber, which had once acted as a massive reservoir of purified water for the high-rise above, shook mightily and swayed, the strain of the ritual ripping across its fabric and beyond. Through the fiery lines of clinging souls I witnessed the ground and towers outside, grinding one against the other.

Through those lines I felt entire sections of the city edge towards collapse.

“Rithgargaxith!” I shrieked to the lead cultist, for him too I recognized, from the Rock - and from nightmares of warehouses full of slaughter. “You know not what you have done!”

“I invoke you!” he shouted back past the long fangs splitting his lips. “I invoke the Light to save this realm from its doom! For the Book has revealed the way!”

From under the cloak he produced a thick tome. And despite being cocooned, I thought my stomach was going to fall straight through in shock to splatter below.

“The Book of Secrets,” I croaked. “You found-”

“Behold!” Rising to bare feet, with both hands the demon held the book above his head. “The angel Raziel’s sacred secrets show all! Your Name, your will, can conquer this realm! The souls will make it yours - free them! As you once freed their stones from me!!”

Elegant script danced across the leather cover in letters of holy fire.

And in those flames I saw what could be.

Even as the walls forming this chamber splintered from the immense and mounting strain before everything tumbled, tossing screaming cultists across a shaking floor. Only Rithgargaxith remained standing, rooted to his spot, rooted to book and ritual.

Beyond the wall, however, another force took action. With lava-fueled wings and shouted power, the stone and earth layered between the Air and Water of this realm stilled, reinforced by an armored angel wielding a sword of emerald flame.

Except below claw-dented armor his original Word itself was without a center, and the strain against the ritual’s hurricane buckled Turiel’s knee.

Buckled the knee of he who was once the Rock of God.

From behind him came a shout. “Amariel! He hasn’t the strength to hold for long!”

“Cassius!”

A second angel wearing flowing black silk floated past the broken walls, maintaining however their distance from the blazing brightness enveloping the center. One eye flashed sapphire, the other ichor-stained green. “If you’re going to conquer Dis, get it done before all collapses!”

Gasping with the strain of keeping myself from either ripping free (and shredding millions if not billions of souls in the process) or embracing them all, I stared past the words of the ritual.

I looked past so I could look forward. And what was finally seen horrified.

“I cannot!”

Rithgargaxith cried out. “You must! Fulfill the promise beheld in your Light!!”

But the vision was clear. “No! They’ll burn!!”

“Your glory shall reign supreme!” The demon shook the Book in emphasis.

Except Cassius, staring into the fierce gathering glow, came to understand. “She’s right, you idiot! The realm will fight against her resonance - and if untempered, her Light will only turn these souls to ash!!”

“But the realm,” stammered the cultist. “They need-”

Through Cassius’ lips the bitterness of Shemyaza cracked, a cackle of hysteric madness. “You’ve doomed them, you magnificent fool! And should she break free of this tangle you have spun instead, the towers all shall topple unto rubble - the irony, how delicious!”

Turiel groaned. “Prince! The stress!” Lines of red-hot lava spiraled from the earthen Grigori, frantically supporting the firmament as new cracks appeared across his armor - and across his spirit.

“She is our grace!” cried Rithgargaxith. “All shall be hers!” Lowering the tome, he added a terrified whisper: “And in her Light shall we find peace.”

Shemyaza landed before him, though the eyeless cultist could not see. “Give me the book! With its knowledge I can free us - we can escape before this place dies, escape Hell itself!”

Oh shit.

Twisting against the webbing born of a million souls, I shouted. “No! Don’t!”

Shemyaza snarled. “Then I shall simply take it!” His left arm reached for the volume clutched in the blind demon’s hands.

While the right plunged a dagger into the reaching hand’s wrist.

Spinning about in rage-filled agony, the Grigori’s arms each fought the other, grappling and stabbing as blood sprayed in a widening circle. “Stop interfering, you ignorant veneer! The key to our survival lies within those pages!!”

Yet a sapphire eye split from its darker brother to stare instead into the Light. “Jordan! Touch me! DO IT!”

From my eyes to his, the Light did just that.

And we three fell into the spaces within.

 

A school-uniformed boy sits alone within an otherwise empty classroom, there at a desk in the back corner by windows whose pulled shades are inadequate to block flashes from the whiter-than-white flames scorching everything outside.

Except he does not stare at that explosive display, for cheeks and forehead bury instead into palms, soft blond hair falling alongside.

A voice, firm yet gentle, fills the room. “He burns, for like so many of the souls of Dis, he too will never accept the Light.”

“I know.”

“Is this truly what you wish?”

“It is what we deserve.”

“Him, yes. But you as well?”

Palms curl into fists. “I am him, as he is me.”

“Yes…and also no. He is but one path for your Name, one aspect only.”

“I cannot fight a will honed across eons. Only his madness leaves me intact, only the fervent desire to self-punish which requires a target to forever torture. Let us end.”

“And you believe this?”

The boy remains silent, and thereby she glimpses an opening.

“He was not always thus. Think, Cassius. Think of who he was - who you were - before events went awry. What was your Purpose?”

“We were to aid mankind. To teach, to guide. To love. And that is where things went wrong.”

“With love?”

“The eternal is not equipped to tie itself to the manifest transient. And upon her return to the Wheel…everything broke.”

“Her?”

“Ishtahar. Daughter to a man of many sheep, a girl cursed by an affliction of the skin he begged us to cure. Just one more scarred and diseased human amongst countless others, but she…she we had to save. For her mind was brilliant, a sharp ruby wrapped below dross and mud. To her we taught everything. To her we gave everything.”

“Yet as a mortal she eventually died.”

“Murdered. By those jealous of our attentions, in a moment of distraction elsewhere.”

She sighs a soft sound of sadness. “And when you needed comfort, needed healing…your return to the Throne and Above was denied.”

“All of us. All of us had need. We were beings created to love, too closely witnessing our many beloveds’ destruction. Their spirits lived on, yes, but the memories - buried under the Wheel and gone. Over and over, century after century. While we carried on. Many gave up, casting themselves unto oblivion. Only for those left behind to be told that they were weak.”

“But you are not.”

“No, for my Name meant strength!” Raising his head, the youth fixes his stare at the blinds. “And Helel, the Lightbringer, he showed the way. Showed how to live through such loss the way mortals do: through the children left behind.”

“That was not his goal.”

“Yet this was the lesson imperfectly received.”

Beyond the windows, a scream of agony, a scream of hate and rage. As all inner secrets, whether desired or no, find themselves illuminated and laid bare within the Light of Lights.

She speaks again, the words echoing through the undecorated classroom. “As you have always revealed where I have erred, teaching me in my own naivety and ignorance, so now do I unto you. For you are not who he was. Upon the Wheel of Life you yourself have spun, living out the stories of many lives.”

The blank board at the front of the room flickers, as upon its surface images move, one after the other. Each within their own window, each a life lived in full upon the Earth. Men and women, young and old, births and deaths, laughter and tears.

Her voice continues. “Your cracked shadow has but a singular tale. One beginning, and one end. Leverage yours, Cassius. Leverage them all. I promise not a binding to the Throne, only the freedom in the Light from which all springs. Ask yourself, is there no Light in these lives? Is there no Light in yours?”

The young man stands, moving forward between the empty desks, pointing towards the images. “And what do you see within these transient flickers? Tell me!”

“See? I see the will to survive and to sacrifice. To love, to teach, to learn, and to give.”

One partition fills with a girl’s face of skin hardened to black stone, tight with concentration as she bends forward to recite words her faith channels from beyond. She accomplishes that which he had known would be necessary, that which would force limits upon the wreckage his ancient pain desired to spill in terror and blood.

“I believe that love,” says the voice, “that strength, that need - within your core these burn still. And billions more now cry for aid - which you can offer and I cannot, for you can guide them across deserts your feet have traveled but mine have never tread.”

“What…what are you asking?”

“For nothing less than a new beginning, a new story. If not for you, then for them. Are you strong enough to overcome the dreadful past, and from those ashes build a brighter future? Are you strong enough to believe that you can do what needs be done?“

The young man remembers his father. Not the booming and overwhelming presence of the Throne’s manifestation, but the humble yet proud smile of a weary man tousling the sun-kissed hair of his toddler son. It was calloused, that hand - thickened by strenuous effort over long hours. To support his wife’s final gift, to support all that mattered.

Never once did the man waver, never once did he complain.

Holding tight to that memory, an angel turns to face blinds sliding open.

“I will be.”

 

Before me hovered an angel consumed by flame, and my burning hand, straining against innumerable silver cords, pressed against his chest.

Again I was but a channel, and a Name fit for a new aspect shouted into the empty hollow weighing so heavily within him.

“Cassiel!! Arise! Fulfill the needs of thine heart!”

With a cry ripped from tremendous pain and glory, his will spread outward to take fierce hold upon the connections to the souls spread out and bound within this realm.

Tight was his grip, yet filled with care as the Light poured through him, and thereby filtered to safely touch them all.

Between us the active ritual shifted, the lines of power releasing me to coalesce instead around the angel whose black wings split two into four, each expanding and painted with intense fire. Along the edges of those flames colors also divided, spilling a vast spectrum across the tips of every feather.

And through those numerous souls to which he now connected did he lay claim to this realm.

The cavern tilted as the realm bucked and struggled, for it could not do otherwise. With burning passion he fought it, strength to strength, power to power. Turiel, overcome and overwhelmed, shouted and collapsed, his hold on maintaining the structure of the surrounding earth shattering.

Cassiel took up that burden - and more.

With keen intelligence and experience, he understood the pattern and its need. Sacrifice and survival, two sides of the same coin.

The exacting coin of this realm.

His will spread outward, matching the resonances of the city and inhabitants to tame their thrashing waves, touching the massive structures rising within the layer of air set between earth and fire. And in the harnessed Light, uncountable souls once transformed into anchors began to pop free.

For the angel’s newly forged Name etched itself instead upon steel, stone, and elements all.

Yet from a distant corner, buried deep under the surrounding river, an anomaly pulsed and refused to bend. Lashing back, it sped through the pattern, warping the newfound stability and causing the reborn angel to shout in agony as the tapestry to which he’d just bound himself ripped and tore.

“Amariel! Help!!”

Except no Light could touch this flaw, and a growing void did not so much smash as disintegrate its way towards our cavern as internal instinct shrieked in terror of recognition.

A Child of Leviathan was coming, opening an endless maw with which to swallow all things.

 

 

New chapters posted every Monday and Friday! Thanks for reading...and for commenting!

- Erisian