30.2

 Hasmed’s expression doesn’t change, but his voice deepens as if it is filled with the foul sediment at the bottom of a foetid lake. There is a hollow, resonant tone to it, and it contains more contempt for Roisin than a whole classful of fifteen-year-old girls. “She is a deviation from the architecture.”

Astaroth tilts his head, smiles and pats the angel on the shoulder. Oddly, they are the same height, though whether Astaroth has grown taller or Hasmed shorter, she cannot tell. She is still almost as tall as the former but may as well be a lilliputian to the latter. He glances across at her, a smile teasing at the corners of his lips. “She is the evolution of the architecture.”

Hasmed’s wings flare wider, the void surging from them like electric sparks from a Tesla coil. “She is not written.”

Astaroth’s smile sharpens to the fine edge of a razor blade. “Neither was I.”

The void shudders as Hasmed’s form flickers — not weakening, but conflicted, as though the architecture he enforces has encountered a strongly worded letter written by an elderly woman in a twin-set about a by-law in the local council’s regulations

Astaroth positions between Hasmed and Roisin, the smile almost plastered into place on a wall showing definite signs of foundational shifting. He glances back at Roisin, eyes bright with something like pride. “As I’ve already stated,” he murmurs. “The Fifth is not an error.” He gives her a wink before turning back to address the Angel of Annihilation “And you cannot erase what the world has already accepted.”

Hasmed takes a deep breath, or would, if there was any purpose to him breathing at all, and snaps his wings, sending a surge of void-matter toward Astaroth and Roisin as fast as an arrow from a compound bow with a really heavy draw. Reality collapses inward; the sky erasing as the void sweeps through it again.

Astaroth simply raises a hand. It is less the gesture of a policeman in front of a speeding getaway car and more the languid arm raise of a schoolboy who is the only person in class to have done the homework. The void hits his palm and stops, not because Astaroth has countered it but because it has the power of a pencil eraser trying to remove a Banksy from a bare concrete wall. It cannot erase Astaroth, because although Astaroth is not in the Architecture of Creation, he is part of the foundation of it. “You cannot unmake me, Hasmed. You never could.”

Hasmed’s wings falter and the void collapses inward.

Roisin gasps as the world snaps back into place around her, her outline solidifying, her place re‑anchoring, the mantle flaring in relief. The sounds of panic from the factions still in the square once more impinge upon their awareness, but there is no angry protesting and counterprotesting anymore; they are all united by what is happening to the world about them. They may not be able to see the angels, but they can see the sky vanishing like the blur of a film reel melting under the heat of the projector.

Astaroth steps closer to Hasmed, lowering his voice to something almost intimate as he throws an arm over the latter’s alabaster shoulder. “And you cannot unmake her either.”

Hasmed’s empty eyes flicker as he shrugs off the comradely arm. A single word escapes him, hollow and shaken: “Why?”

Astaroth smiles like a cat who not only got the cream, but one whose human companion had bought a whole crate of the best salmon, only to find the cat preferred tuna. “Because she belongs.”

Roisin’s awareness of the square fades again as she concentrates on the pair of angels. There is a vibration around them; shards of soul flicker in and out of focus as she tries to see beyond the visible. The void around Hasmed’s wings trembles as the air around them buckles and the light dims to a colour that is the absence of sight. She feels the mantle tighten around her ribs and cushion her spine, bracing her for something it cannot name.

Astaroth watches Hasmed with the calm, clinical interest of someone observing microbial bacteria eating strands of vegetable protein. She imagines him wearing a white lab coat and glasses.

Hasmed has frozen in place; the statue his perfect figure would suggest, and there is the exact catastrophe she sensed as she arrived. Hasmed cannot be stopped, for he is written into the architecture of Creation, but he has been stopped. Although he is the eraser Heaven uses to remove what should not be in Creation, Creation has been amended.

The void fractures.

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