24.7

 

Roisin shakes her head. What was the point of making such a difficult decision between being angel and being human if it was all being stripped from her now?  “I’m not— I can’t—” She swallows the lump of terror that seems to be lodged in her throat. “I’ll be Famine. I’ll take my place with no more distractions.” She looks at the Artist. “Tell him. Tell him this is what I’m meant to be.”

Astaroth cuts her off with a raised finger. “You are becoming Justice. The mantle of knowledge has chosen you, just as the mantle of Famine has chosen your offspring.”

“Justice?” If angels could spit, the Artist would do so now. “There is no justice but that which the Creator offers. If is not our place to presume those who deserve Heaven from those who do not.”

“I never said it was.” Astaroth laughs. “I would not dare assign such hubris to the Four. But Roisin is no longer of the Four. She is apart, alone, The Fifth. The one who stands between the Four,” Astaroth says. “The one who tempers them. The one who speaks for them. The one who remembers what they forget. Th one who mediates between the Four and the world of mortals.”

Roisin’s breath trembles. “I didn’t choose this.”

Astaroth’s eyes gleam. “No one ever chooses what they truly are.” He leans in, voice soft as the dust on the picture of her grandmother on her mother’s landing. “You are the Fifth Horseman—not of destruction, but of balance. The one who keeps the others from ending the world too soon.”

Roisin feels the touch of the Nephilim as the mantle of Famine withdraws, settling back into the comfort of the giant’s body. The horse pulses in recognition of the new arrangement. She feels the truth settle into her like the stone of Sisyphus she has been pushing uphill for centuries without knowing it. “I’m becoming the thing that stands between the angels and the mortals?”

Astaroth nods. “Exactly.” He steps back, satisfied, and claps his hands like a game show host when the contestant guesses the right answer. “You are becoming the one thing Heaven never accounted for.” His smile sharpens. “And the one thing Hell cannot predict.”

This is what the whole situation feels like. A game show where she is the contestant and the others are merely part of the show. If she chooses wisely, she gets the prize but if she chooses badly then not only does the game show end, but the whole world does as well.

The Nephilim steps closer to her, its presence steady and grounding. Steve stares at her with horror and heartbreak tangled in his eyes. Paul looks like he might faint.

Roisin stands in the centre of the room, feeling the shape of herself settling into place. Astaroth’s words are still hanging in the air — fulcrum, mediator, hinge — when the room shifts again. Not physically, for Steve and Paul remain exactly as they were, but those of Celestial heritage feel it. The Nephilim feels it first. Its head tilts sharply, its awareness flaring like a lantern in a storm. The horse inside its chest pulses once, twice, then goes utterly still, as though holding its breath.

Roisin feels a pressure behind her eyes, a tightening in her ribs, similar to the pull of the Horse but less insistent, more like the sensation like a door she didn’t know existed swinging open inside her mind.

Astaroth smiles. “Ah,” he murmurs. “Speak of the devil...”

Roisin staggers, gripping the edge of the door frame. The world around her blurs — not dimming, not brightening, but sharpening, as though every object in the room has suddenly remembered its true outline.

Steve reaches out to steady her, but the Nephilim steps between them, preventing his touch. It seems to understand that this is something a mortal – even a Biblically long-lived one -- should not interfere with.

Astaroth watches with the glee of a child watching a lightning storm that’s far enough away not to be a danger. “You feel it, don’t you?” he says. “The mantle that was never meant for a rider. The one that has been waiting for a mind capable of holding it.”

Roisin’s breath trembles because she feels it — not as a force pressing into her, but as a shape rising from within her. A shape that has been dormant, coiled, waiting for her to become the thing that could bear it. The Fifth Horseman. Judgement. The one who stands between.

Astaroth steps closer, voice low and reverent. “Knowledge is not a rider. It is not a horse. It is not a force of destruction. It is the mantle that observes. The mantle that remembers. The mantle that understands the Four — and the world they balance — better than they ever could.”