24.8

 

Roisin closes her eyes as another vision bursts like fireworks over the London Eye. There is no pain to the vision, but the sense of completeness is as beautiful as the New Year celebrations watched on the television without the sound. The mantle is once again in front of her, but not in the void this time, but inside her vision. The Four Horsemen are the cardinal points of a circle, with Famine held by the Nephilim. In the centre stands Steve, a creature of the supernatural world, yet one who remains forever mortal, and serves as the pivot representing the humanity the four revolve around but never touch. Around them all it a cirle of light which she recognises as representing herself.

She clutches her head, tears edging from the corners of her eyes. “This is too much. I can’t— I’m not—”

Astaroth’s voice cuts through her rising protests. “You are not taking the mantle, yet, Roisin. You are recognising it. You are seeing what will become of you should you follow this path.”

The Nephilim reaches out, placing a hand on her back. Its touch steadies her, anchoring her in the physical world as her mind expands into something far larger. Inside its chest, the horse pulses once, and she feels it as an acknowledgement of her new role.

Roisin’s breath stutters as she inhales. “What is happening to me?”

Astaroth’s eyes gleam. “Just as you are contemplating Justice, you are being judged yourself. Are you worthy of becoming the one who knows the Four? The one who interprets them? The one who remembers the first balance?” He lifts a hand, and the air around Roisin shimmers. “Knowledge is not power but orientation. The ability to understand arguments from both sides at once. It is the map the world has forgotten it needs.”

Roisin feels something settle into her — not heavy, not overwhelming, but vast. A presence that is not a voice or a hunger like before, but a clarity;  a way of seeing the every living being as the fractal souls she was seeing before, but now she sees them in an abstract form, their colours and patterns shimmering with word and deed, intent and execution, She inhales sharply her perception of the room changes.

She sees the Nephilim’s triple nature, mortal, angel and horseman, as an overlapping triptych of transparencies, each on its own series of hues but combining to make a palette of such vibrancy that it would be granted an exhibition at the Tate if only mortal could witness it. Astaroth’s true shape is revealed as a whole matrix; a lattice of intentions and consequences like the illustration of a gravity well with Hell at the infinite bottom of the curve, and like the gravity well of a black hole, it sucks all matter into its spindle and drags it away from the purity of Heaven. Steve becomes a collection of light and dark facets, each spinning like the plates of a circus performer, first steady, then wobbling. She can see no overall pattern to his fractals; he is neither good nor bad, just a vast collection of the decisions he’s made over several centuries. The Artist is a tapestry of autumnal hues, each one brimming with the possibility of new life to be recycled from the old. Only the assistant is absence of colour, unless the variety of grey shades like dried clay being fed into a pugging machine counts, for there is no soul there, only life granted in a second-hand fashion, and she is not a ghoul at all, but like the colours of her borrowed soul, a being of clay and will.

Roisin herself is a point of convergence between them all, the juggler with his spinning plates, the artist with her palettes and brushes, the philosopher with the weights of decisions balanced as a Jenga tower of interlocking ack Straws.

Astaroth bows his head slightly. “You have been found worthy,” he says. “Welcome, Roisin, to the mantle that does not ride.”

She lowers her vision to the mortal realm, and the room comes back into focus. Her voice is barely a whisper. “…I can see everything.”

“Not everything,” Astaroth corrects gently. “Only what you are meant to mediate.”

The Nephilim’s awareness brushes hers, warm and steady as she feels the new mantle settle over her frame. It is not heavy like she expected the horse to be. It does not weigh her down or overbalance her. It is no more burdensome than a silk scarf under the falls of the Trevi Fountain.

It recognises her. Accepts her. Aligns with her. She straightens slowly, the clarity settling into her bones like a second spine. In one hand she holds a shimmering sword and in the other, the blackened scales she once carried as Famine have turned as golden as sunlight on the surface of a lake. She is Justice.