33.2

 

“Wait.” Steve crosses the room, barely glancing at Namaan before stepping in the circle of angels and demi-angels. “The sixth seal isn’t revelation, it’s the sun going dark, the moon turning read and the stars dropping from the sky.” He purses his lips and shakes his head as if to jostle the memory more fully. “Then there’s something about great men hiding in caves as the sky rolls back like parchment.”

Astaroth nods. “Sounds about right.” He looks to Pestilence for confirmation.

“Nuclear strikes,” agreed the rider. “I remember Brother War being excited when the got invented so quickly. Almost as if someone was helping the mortals with their science experiments.” He shrugged. “It was never proven. Poor Johnny was high as a kite when he got shown that. He’d never seen a bunker, so he literally couldn’t tell one from a hole in the ground.” Pestilence laughs. “What about the stars falling? I always thought that was an allegory of the Rebellion but that was eons ago.”

Astaroth does an odd, hunching shrug with his hands close to his shoulder, palms out. “Well, yes, unless the new Creator knows about the Alliance.”

“What alliance?” Roisin looks from one to the other, feeling like a Monopoly property being fought over before being ultimately mortgaged for an infinite number of years. With compound interest. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“The Rebellion of the angels occurred a long time ago, yes, but do you honestly think we’d have rebelled if the numbers against us were two to one?”

Pestilence looked to the Nephilim. “Do you know anything about this?”

It is Namaan’s turn to shrug. “It was all a bit above my paygrade, your honour.”

They all look at Astaroth, who has that self-satisfied look of someone who handed their undergraduate thesis in long before anyone else even started theirs. “It was all planned,” he says. “Half of all the angels were rebels, we just let them think they’d cast us all down. We left a good few thousand of our number in Heaven to sow seeds of discontent until we had better numbers. Which is about now, to be fair. How did you think I got into Heaven to assassinate the Creator without a few angels to accidentally leave a few gates unguarded, a few planes unpatrolled?”

Pestilence looked up to the ceiling, as if he could spot Hasmed hammering away at the head of a pin up there, mending the fabric of the universe. “I thought you were just sneaky.”

“Sneaky? Yes. Fucking invisible? No. There’s no getting past Old Spooky without a distraction or two, and a sudden wobble in the fabric of the World while Hasmed has his mind on something else.”

“Something else being me?”

“Exactly.” Astaroth beams, and Roisin feels bathed in the warmth of acceptance. Briefly.

She can feel tears pricking at the corner of her eyes as the glow fades. “If I’m opening the sixth seal, that means there’s going to be a thermonuclear war?”

“Magic Eight Ball says ‘probably?’” Astaroth shrugs. “I’m surprised we got this far, let alone whether everything is going to go to the original plan. Johnny was seeing a vision of the future given to him by the Angel of Revelation, almost two thousand years before it happens. He wouldn’t know what an atom bomb was, neither could he distinguish one from a falling star or a yeeted angel. Prophesies are always open to interpretation. It’s only when one matches what actually happens that people tap the side on their nose and say ‘See? He was right.’”

“Revelation was an angel?” Roisin frowns. “I thought that was just the name of the book?”

“It’s both. Verb and noun. Angel, book and prophesy. You must remember there wasn’t a thesaurus in those days. People used the same words to mean different things. Hene the thousand names for the Creator.”

“You mean God?”

Astaroth gave a little bow. “My point exactly.”

“But if breaking the sixth seal – and it’s not something I’m consciously doing, I assure you, brings Revelation, what does that mean? You said it was to rebuild the framework of creation, not the destruction of it.”

“You have to rub out the words before you re-use the parchment.” Astaroth tuts at what is obviously Roisin’s blank expression. He drops his voice to a whisper. “You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette. You have to tear the warehouse down before you can build the block of flats. Revelation just means the world is about to show you what it really is.” He leans closer, eyes bright with something between fear and detached amusement. “Roisin, you need to understand this. Revelation is not a vision. It is not a message or even a warning.” He taps her sternum, right where the mantle pulses. “It is you. Your perception. Your clarity. Your unwritten nature.”