30.4

 

Hasmed’s empty eye sockets develop a crack across the bridge between them. Microfractures craze across the rest of his skull and down into his shoulders and clavicles. His glitching is threatening to tear him apart. “You are an addition,” he says, voice fracturing. “You are a deviation from Creation. Yet Creation has allowed your arrival. There is no evolution and yet you have evolved.” The last word comes out warped, as though the concept itself is incompatible with his rigid thought processes.

The void around him surges, then recoils, then surges again, pulsing like a disco light at the very end of the night when the music has long since stopped and the disc jockey is packing away his equipment. It feels like the last chance not to go home alone, but Roisin wants to go home alone. What is she even doing here when all she wanted to do was make a living as an artist?

The crowd feels the disturbance happening a fraction of a wavelength away from them. Although the see nothing but the changing sky, they can that something enormous is happening just beyond the edge of their comprehension. There is a camera crew now, interviewing members of the crowd over what has been happening to the sky. People have their phones out and without even looking at hers, Roisin knows the topic here will be trending on social media. Hashtag Apocalypse, anyone? She can feel the pressure around her as the sort she gets before a heavy thunderstorm, a headache brewing behind the backs of her eyes.

Astaroth leans in toward her with just his body; his head remaining perfectly upright. She wonders briefly if angels, even fallen ones, can be gay. He whispers into Roisin’s awareness: “He is breaking.”

Hasmed’s wings snap open as the absence they are made of spills outward, though nothing is being erased this time but there is a distortion in the fabric of reality. The sky flickers between clear blue, clouds, thunderheads and brief snatches of the void. The buildings warp at the edges, changing shape, structure, materials. The ground hums with a low, bone‑deep vibration. Sounds of the city are interspersed with shouts and cries; fading and growing in volume between English, French, and dialects Roisin can only barely recognise as Old English, Saxon, German, and Latin from her elective classes in Literature and Poetry.

She clutches her chest as the mantle flares in alarm, urging her to leave before they become untethered, though from exactly what, it does not say.

Astaroth steps forward, his voice low and steady, as he puts his hands on the other angel’s shoulders. “Hasmed. Listen to me.”

Hasmed’s head jerks toward him. “You contradict,” he says. “You oppose Creation.” He shudders, causing ripples of void-stuff to spill out. “You define that which was not created.”

Astaroth smiles faintly. “I do.”

Hasmed’s form shudders. “You… you should not exist.”

Astaroth’s eyes gleam as he smiles at his former brother. “Neither should you.”

The void convulses as Hasmed’s wings fold inward, then explode outward in a shockwave of unmaking that rolls across the square—

—and stops.

Astaroth has spread his wings around the Angel of Annihilation forming a near-perfect sphere of… whatever his wings are made of, because it’s neither the traditional depiction of feathers nor the universally accepted bat-like membranes associated with demons. It looks more like flesh than membrane, through the skeletal structure contained within them will be a future challenge to paint. If she ever gets to paint again, and that’s assuming she even survives this encounter. The fleshy wings bow out for a moment like stress bubbles on car tyres and then soften, folding back upon themselves like the roof of a high-end convertible. Once folded back into his spine, they disappear entirely. She would never even have guessed Astaroth was an angel if she didn’t already know. He turns when his wings are neatly tucked away and Roisin sees the damage Hasmed has done to his torso. Much of it is burned so deeply she can see his twisted muscles exposed to the air. She has to look twice when her eyes detect the faintest movement. She doesn’t know what she expected to see, but it certainly wasn’t the flesh regrowing, pink and shiny with mucus, to cover and repair the wounds. If she could get the secret of that, it would make her more money than Bezos.

Hasmed kneels on the floor, his body broken in a thousand cracks and fractures. He is still mumbling confused and glitching fragments of sentences: “Correction… …contraction… contradiction… corruption… conservation… conception…”