22.3

 

She was there at the Beginning, and she will be there at the End, whatever that might be, for although the assumed ending of the world is that which the angel Yihvah offered to St. John on Patmos, the Nephilim offers her another possibility. No prophecy, this, but an alternate path, that could become Truth, one where the Horsemen rise again not to open the remaining seals ad bring about the resurrection and the ending of the world, but to counterbalance the angel’s attempt to gather all the souls for themselves.

The Nephilim offers another possibility, one where the Horsemen and the Nephilim stand together; where the Nephilim carry the mantles of the horses, leaving the four aspects of Araksiel hidden from the Eyes of the Creator. The Artist would not be the Aspect known as Pestilence, and neither would Roisin be Famine. Each would be something else entirely, able to stand in the space between human and angel and between memory and identity. Easch would act as a bridge between the Aspect and their Mantle to draw upon their powers.

Roisin has never imagined such a role could exist, not from the religious indoctrination of her childhood, nor the knowledge she has received in the last few days. She has the impression that not even the Artist has thought about this possibility, since only the Nephilim could have offered the service.

She feels the awareness of the Nephilim touch her again. There is a question here, as well as an offer. It is not asking her to take the mantle, but to steer the future to the new path. She does not need to reclaim the horse as assume the burden of the full aspect of Famine, but to stand with the Nephilim at her side, to weather the onslaught of the Angels neither as enemy of them nor ally to them, but as independent arbitrators, the role for which they were originally made.

To stand as captors or protectors of the Nephilim, but as their kin. She understands what it is to be made of two incompatible halves that nevertheless cooperate. She remembers the shape of Balance.

And she does. Those days (centuries?) of walking through the world, balancing the abundance of Eden by stripping the remaining lands of resources, bringing famine to the other quarters of the world while the Creator dabbled with His new toys. She remembers her attempt to bring fairness to Egypt, with seven years of fruitfulness followed by seven of famine, and the lands of Canaan the reverse. She knows Balance; knows the slackline of walking between one extreme to another without falling, and so she can be the first to step into this new role and help hide both mantle and Nephilim from Heaven.

Roisin inhales sharply, her hand tightening around its fingers and for the first time since she became her human family fell apart when her brother died, she feels she belongs somewhere. No longer is the world subject to the desires and manipulations of angels. No longer is she tied to the destruction of every piece of art created as homage to the glory of Life an no longer must she and the other Aspects subvert the justice they were created for. She can be free of her destiny. Free of her mantle. Free of her past.

To her belongs the future. If she grasps it.

Between the Nephilim and she, language has become irrelevant

The Nephilim’s fingers are cool and impossibly still in her palm. Not dead or inert. Simply anchored in a different kind of existence. Its awareness presses against hers—soft, patient, ancient—and Roisin feels her own thoughts shift to meet it the way a body at rest adjusts to gravity.

Her mouth opens. She has no idea what she’s going to say, only that it is her turn to do so. Her first word is not English, not even a word in any human language, but a shape of her breath. It’s a sound that feels like dust and horizon and the echo of hooves over barren soil. A sound she has never made as Roisin, but her body remembers it the way a scar remembers the wound that birthed it.

The Nephilim’s dips its head as the horse inside its chest pulses, a feeling Roisin feels not with her body but with her heart.

In the room around them, the air tightens like the rope of a falling alpinist. Behind her, Steve flinches, Paul gasps, the assistant lets out a silent scream and the Artist smiles, but she doesn’t notice any of them. Instead, she is looking into the hollow eyes of a being that should not exist—and yet knows her better than anyone alive.