36.4

 

Astaroth grabs her arm. “It shouldn’t affect you. You’re the Sixth Seal now, not a hybrid. I don’t know why you’re having trouble. You shouldn’t be. There’s no reason for it.” His face creases with concern. “I don’t understand.”

“Namaan.” Roisin’s voice sounds weak, even to her. Speaking is like forcing air into a partially blown-up bouncy castle when your lips don’t quite form a seal around the nozzle. “Save him first.”

“I can’t.” Astaroth shakes his head. “Gabriel’s added rules the Creator didn’t even think of. It’s no longer a case of Him trying to get rid of the Nephilim, now there is no overlapping of genetic compatibility. They can’t exist at all.” He looks away as Namaan disintegrates, leaving nothing but a smear of charcoal across the blueprint. “I’m so sorry.”

Roisin cries out, trying to gather the charcoal and paint in her hands as it begins to drift away from what was once the most beautiful man in the world, but it’s no use. The materials she used are not even in a form she can physically hold any more; they are an idea, a concept, an application of thought and creativity.

Pestilence shouts at Gabriel. “You’re killing them all. That’s not your decision to make. The Creator made the rules that allowed them. You can’t just kill them all.”

Gabriel glances at them. “I’m not killing anything, Jedith. They never existed. How can I kill something that never existed?”

Roisin takes a deep breath and wipes the back of her hand over her face to wipe away the tears from her cheeks. “They did exist. They do exist. I remember them, therefore they existed. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and I possess the knowledge.”

“Knowledge.” Astaroth grabs her arm. “Knowledge.”

She shakes him off, still too upset about the loss of her friend to abide the touch of another. “What about it?”

“Nobody has control of the mantle of knowledge.” He points toward what is left of Hasmed. “It will still be there.”

“I thought it was destroyed when he broke open the Seventh seal?”

“You can’t destroy a mantle. Mould, shape it, yes, but not destroy it.”

“Then why is he gone? I’m the Sixth Seal and I wasn’t destroyed. Why didn’t he survive the breaking like I did?”

“He didn’t allow the seal to become part of him like you did. That’s why you weren’t damaged when Gabriel removed the Nephilim.” Astaroth lets out a sudden bark of laughter. “What an idiot. If he’d allowed the seal to become part of him, he would have survived his own destruction.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“It turns of he was guilty of a sin.” The angel shakes his head, still laughing. “Pride. He had too much pride to allow the mantle to be absorbed. He thought he was already perfect.”

“You know I can still hear you?” Gabriel is much closer to the husk of Hasmed than any of them. It is a simple matter to step toward the forgotten mantle, and since he is now the centre of the architecture, his movement is instantaneous; the whole metaverse moving around his thought. “Thank you for reminding me, brother. It would have been such a shame to have it wasted on you.” His hand hovers over the mantle — a sphere of shimmering concept, one of the architecture’s oldest truths.

Astaroth lunges forward. “Gabriel! Don’t touch that.”

Gabriel doesn’t look up. “I must.”

Roisin steps forward. It is her turn to catch the arm of her Fallen ally before he does something rash, like attack Gabriel again. (Again? How does she know this is not the first time they’ve fought?) “Why?”

Gabriel’s voice is calm. “Because the Seventh Seal has opened. The Final Judgement has begun. And someone must judge.” He closes his fingers around the mantle.

The architecture screams as the mantle of knowledge flares. It is like watching the flash of a nuclear bomb, but instead of light and deadly radiation, the shockwave is of Truth.

It is as if even the attosecond they exist within has become frozen in time, and all those present at this point in the planes see a series of images sketched out on the blueprint. Astaroth picking up the mantle of creation, hesitating, and putting it down again; Astaroth crushing the prism that defined the essence of the Creator; Astaroth creeping through the planes, past a number of armed angels who just happen to be looking, despite their thousand eyes, the other way; the confrontation between Roisin and Hasmed, and his breakdown just at the moment the Creator’s prism become exposed; Gabriel directing angels to guard the entrance to the Hells, seemingly convinced an attack is imminent; Pestilence, in the guise of The Artist, talking in hushed tones with Gabriel, and pointing toward the Hellmouth.