36.3

 

The architecture is trembling, half‑collapsed, half‑revealed. Hasmed lies, broken like a hollowed log, his ribs splayed outwards like the wings of a Viking blood eagle ritual torture. Ripples of void spill from him in soft, silent waves. The thirty minutes of awe‑struck silence hangs over everything like a held breath before the movie jump-scare.

Roisin feels the tightening of the world as it begins to narrow in possibility, shifting to the aftermath of the opening of the seals, the declaration of judgement and a shift toward something cleaner and colder than anything the Author ever made.

Gabriel’s voice rings out; a death-bell ringing compared to the silence they have all just witnessed. Eardrums are shattered and the world below cowers in terror, shrinking back toward the ideal of Pangea; of Eden before the Fall of Adam. Earthquakes level the remains of cities; opening pits to the dwellers of the abyss; land masses collide forming mountains where there were valleys, and doubling, tripling the heights of the Matterhorn, Everest, Kilimanjaro, until their tips pierce the atmosphere; space needles for a population of explorers about to become extinct. “Creation begins with order.”

The first thing he does is restore the boundaries, and he begins with the establishment of the planes, although far fewer return to existence than before. He establishes the barriers between the Heavens and the Earth, and between the Earth and the lands beneath. Roisin feels herself, and the other celestials, lifted as the Seven Hells fall away from then; an almost-perfect labyrinthian circle of tiers descending further than she can see; the underside of a 3D printed mountain, hollow, vast and deep. Suspended like a mezzanine over the drop, Tartarus stands alone. There is no more Sheol; no more Limbo. The river Styx pours through Tartarus directly into the void, for there is no further need for Charon to ferry souls across, for he has removed the possibility of forgetfulness and re-birth. Around the earth, religions collapse as their central tenets are destroyed. There will be no need for spiritual enlightenment, because there will be no belief in a higher power, only the proof of it.

Roisin takes her first deep breath since Gabriel appeared, the pressure of the collapsed planes eased, at least for a moment. She glances across at her companions. The Riders have shrouded themselves back into human forms. War’s sword has become a briefcase chained to her wrist; Death has been watching too many low-budget movies and now wears a skull-mask over his skull and exchanged his sword for a half-metre chainsaw. There’s something quite satisfyingly meta about him wearing a skull mask, and she desperately wants to buy him a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘Ce n'est pas un crane.’ [RG1] It would be hilarious. Pestilence is no longer in the garb of The Artist and has traded his robe for a lab-coat and his scales for a stethoscope.

Namaan’s shriek forces her attention back to the present. Whatever rule Gabriel has reinserted is tearing the Nephilim apart. Bits of his form are peeling away; flesh from bone; bone from charcoal and paint. She tries to fold her arms around him, but they encounter nothing physical, for his body is as solid a smoke. She looks toward Astaroth. “What’s happening to him?”

Her companion winces as he tries to comprehend the boundary the archangel has set. “There was a blur between the Elohim and the Mortal,” he says, his breath coming in gasps as if he was speaking through a hurricane. “He’s sharpened it to extinguish hybrids.”

“Hybrids?” She frowns as a suspicion rises regarding Gabriel’s intent. “Human and Angel, you mean?”

“Yes. He’s trying to eliminate you by separating you DNA into component parts. You won’t survive if he manages it. It would be like removing your central nervous system and expecting you and it to be separate identities.”

“And that’s what it’s doing to Namaan?”

“Yes. It’s splitting him into two parts, stripping away the Elohim part from the human one. It will kill him. It will kill all the Nephilim.”

The rules snap into place like chalked string snapped against a bare canvas and Roisin gasps as the architecture tightens around her. She feels her breath being once more crushed out of her, and she remembers a series of woodcuts illustration the ludicrous trials of the Pendle ‘witches,’ who were a group of Lancastrian women (and two men) tried and murdered for the death of some villagers by means of hexes and spells. It was just coincidence that their accusers were then able to take over the land belonging to them. A common death for those accused of witchcraft was ‘boarding,; where a door was placed over a bound ‘witch’ and had stones added until she was crushed to death. Now she knew how it felt.

 [RG1]This is not a skull

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