Hope's Light

Chapter 35 & Epilogue

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Thirty-Five - Doors

The transit was taking forever.

Hope's Light

Chapter 34

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Thirty-Four - Departures

Having become acclimated to flying the spaces between realms, the trip was uneventful and direct. Not as quick as an immediate translation, but I wasn’t ready to test such maneuvering to patterns not ingrained in both memory and heart.

Somehow both felt necessary.

Hope's Light

Chapter 32

by Erisian

Book 6

Part Seven

Chapter Thirty-Two - Gifts

Distant birds in Gabriel’s sky hang motionless, and the breeze ruffling through her brother’s soft curls ceases entire. The scene of the mighty slabs guarding the entrance to the Monument below sits frozen, and, unlike before, the page does not turn.

Everything remains still instead, as if suspended by Raphael’s previous words.

Until a different voice entire speaks.

“You have questions.”

Hope's Light

Chapter 30

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Thirty - Diplomacy

With everyone watching, I stepped to the table, filled a goblet, and downed it in one go.

Ugh. Whatever vintage Horatio had brought out this time, it wasn’t Asmodian. Nor I’d bet of the wines Vance had spoken highly about a long time ago, those crafted by the elves of Nidavellir. I’d forgotten how bitter were most of the offerings in Hell - heck, I’d even have preferred that Chardonnay from the dragon soiree I’d attended with Isaiah.

Dangit. Isaiah.

What was I going to tell my friend? That his greater spirit would eventually decide whether I should be allowed to exist? And if decided against, Azrael would be forced to destroy me.

Would that mean Isaiah would have to try to kill me too?

Hope's Light

Chapter 28

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Questions

There, hovering before what only pretended to be the blackest of clouds, lurked a sinister metallic sphere. How, one might ask, does a smoothly specular ball floating within an emptiness pressing against the true Void of Voids earn such a moody description?

The answer is simple: it emanates a hum of resonance filled beyond the brim with barely restrained violence, like a coiled spring which required industrial machinery to press into place and then held back only by a worn and rusted clasp on the brink of snapping. The tension so mighty that, if unleashed, the sphere would launch itself across a cosmos and plow through any stellar object foolish enough to happen to be in the way.

Rules of physics literally be damned.

Hope's Light

Chapter 26

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Twenty-Six - Threats

Cassiel was helping Turiel to his feet when Krux’s military force finally swarmed the cavern, his soldiers bursting through the steel doors or clambering over the broken stones of the walls. Seeing three angels as the only ones moving, they didn’t know what to do. Deciding it was safer to simply leave us alone, they spread out to check the numerous cultists unconscious or dead splayed messily across the cracked tiles.

Hope's Light

Chapter 25

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Twenty-Five - Unknowable

How does one describe the indescribable?

The rampaging anomaly was a rift in the pattern of not just this realm but the very fabric of existence, and words cannot encompass that which is beyond all meaning. Even memories of such contact naturally fail to record the true measure of horror and struggle.

Hope's Light

Chapter 23

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Twenty-Three - Taijitu

In the coldest of air we gathered at the top of the Spires. Out of the rock face a matching henge to its counterpart at the embassy in Dis had long ago been excavated, though this one was not currently pockmarked from the insult of repeated energy blasts, having been resurfaced after its own checkered history. Twitch and Horatio stood at my side, while Vance, leaning on a short-yet-distinguished onyx cane and shivering underneath the thickest of silver-furred coats, had been busy examining all the sigils and workings carved into the stones - ensuring that each was still properly aligned.

Hope's Light

Chapter 21

by Erisian

Book 6

Part Five

Chapter Twenty-One - Harvest

Pages flip past, a time-lapse of images documenting the expansion of a grand city rising in sacred service to the Throne. Structures of meaning and empowered will, each unfolding as perfect edifices of collaboration and interchange, each glittering under the eternal illumination shining from Above as channeled through the forged unity binding all to one, and one to all.

And below this glory of infinites, to a tower of dazzling brilliance a dark angel comes.

Hope's Light

Chapter 19

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Nineteen - Prophecy

When Twitch and I finally stepped through the portal ourselves, I instantly knew where we’d gone:

The Spires.

A few sleeps by wagon away from Outpost Epsilon, forces deep underground had shoved tall formations of rock and crystal to tower over the lifeless plains of ice and shadows below. Here is where the Lilim traders under Vance had built their secret portal to their embassy in Dis, and here is where Colonel Dhalgrix had landed his mercenary company before slaughtering their way to the Outpost and to the Hole itself.

You know, before I caught up to him.

Hope's Light

Chapter 17

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Seventeen - Needles

Beliel’s Tears, the waters of Lethe. The stuff had many names and had spawned legends both in Hell and on Earth.

And had almost allowed a Chaos-infected jerk subsume and conquer the angelic princes of the damned.

Hope's Light

Chapter 16

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Sixteen - Grace

Over thirty demons and souls genuflected before me.

And I had no idea how to respond.

The bridge crew looked at him, concern radiating from every face. The young woman at comms was first to find her voice. “Captain? Orders?”

Hope's Light

Chapter 14

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Fourteen - Balance

The crimson trail illuminated by the bracers held steady and straight, but the realm of hot barren desert curved away as we flew higher through a sky of perpetual sunset. There the path twisted to snap at right angles to the realm’s reality, and once more we found ourselves fading through clouds into somewhere else.

Hope's Light

Chapter 12

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Twelve - Ideals

Sucking air into lungs finding themselves able to expand fully, Nick again pushed a hand against the rack of green produce to stay upright.

“Gimme…gimme a minute.”

“Sure.”

Emotions, fresh and bleeding, spilled one after another across the lines of his face. Not just the tautness of anger and pain - but also the deepest troughs of despair, haunted by what he’d just touched.

Hope's Light

Chapter 11

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Eleven - Stand

I spent a few more minutes, there in the now-empty hall. Tsáyidiel remained quiet, allowing me space to think. While the idea of returning to give Krux the grief he so greatly deserved appealed, the entire quest to find the Apostle no longer felt as urgent.

Oh, I still wanted to know if this demon had information that could lead to my other friends, and also wanted to find out just exactly who he was to be saying things in my name. But from what Cassius had just told me, other priorities had become much more important.

And thus decision became action.

Hope's Light

Chapter 9

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Nine - Instincts

It had been less than a sleep’s turn since I’d arrived in Hell, and already I’d witnessed three murders. Four, if including Pierre’s self-sacrificing suicide. Technically they were already dead to begin with, but once reduced to a compact stone that was it for their spirits. From everything I’d been told, that was the last one-way trip a soul could take.

Short of jumping into the Abyss, anyway.

Hope's Light

Chapter 8

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Eight - Knives

We rode for at least a couple hours if not more. At the speeds the trucks could reach, the wind’s whipping past in all the tunnels made further conversation with the guy next to me impossible - though before we’d pulled out he’d introduced himself as Santiago.

I’d told him to call me Jane, and neither of us were rude enough to point out that we’d obviously given aliases.

Hope's Light

Chapter 6

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Six - Potatoes

“Why does one without need seek passage?”

The grey-cloaked spirit towering over me stood thirty-feet tall. With sandals straddling slowly rocking parallel top decks of a slender felwood boat, the voice boomed out from under a deep and shadowed hood. If the barren expanse behind had any features other than scattered ancient bone, the sound would have echoed mightily - but as things were it simply resounded loudly from above.

And given the message, I’d barely started this undercover investigation and already my cover was blown. Joy.

Making her mission succeed requires Mantra to establish a truce between two warring factions. To do so, she has to negotiate with a woman who was one of the most admired heroines on her Earth. But what can she expect from the vengeful version of that person living in a world as mad as this one?

Hope's Light

Chapter 3

by Erisian

Book 6

Chapter Three - Sin

Languages are magic.

Think about it. By making weird sounds or scribbling strange markings against a surface, we transmit ideas, conjure images the recipient has never seen, and organize the very way we think. And it’s not limited to only verbal or written mediums; there is language in music, in mathematics, in dance and motion, and yes, in the act of making love. They are the tools by which we interact with each other and the universe at large, coordinating our very perceptions into meaning.

Mostly we use language to manipulate the thoughts and ideas of others, but some…well, some use it to manipulate the world directly. And what lies behind it.

Hope's Light

Prologue & Chapter 1

by Erisian

Book 6

Part One

Prologue - Bargain

“Are you certain this is the right path?”

Two figures crept down a narrow underground passageway, shoes slipping across shallow puddles lining the curved concrete floor. Their coats, one jet black and the other a lighter brown, flickered in the weak light offered only by a white crystal held forward by the taller and much darker-skinned man.

“They didn’t provide a map, Callas. I told you the same instructions they told me, and your memory is as perfect as mine. If you think we’ve misapplied the sequence, you should’ve spoken up.”

“Hmm.”