Chapter 35.1

 


The moment Hasmed disappears, the flat shudders as the architecture begins to topple. Cracks appear across the walls and floors, exposing bits of void with the glowing sparks of like caught like bubbles in a frozen pond. The walls ripple like fabric as the ceiling bows inward like a tent under a heavy rainstorm and what’s left of the floor becomes a grid of trembling intention.

Astaroth grabs Roisin’s hand. “Don’t look at the room, look at the pattern behind everything. You can look past everything to see the inner kernel of all the planes that exist around us, built like layers of onion skins continuously expanding with new layers and new planes. Every decision made spawns a possible future and the layers around the outside should be growing at an exponential rate.”

Roisin closes her eyes for a picosecond and when she opens them the flat has gone. There is no void, either, and no sparks revealing the location of mortal souls, just a vast landscape of not-light and not-darkness overlaid with grids like the beginnings of a town-building game, but overlaid on the grins, glowing faintly in the ultra-violet spectrum, the outlines of planets, stars and, further still, galaxies.  

Roisin gasps, turning a full circle as she looks around. “I’m seeing the architecture.”

Astaroth nods, unable to conceal the look upon his face. It was the look a parent gives their five-year old when they win a spelling test in front of the whole school, or the almost-tears of a mother whose daughter has just won an Oscar for her depiction of a national heroine. “You’re not just seeing it, Roisin, you’re inside it.”

The Nephilim steps forward, its awareness flaring like a beacon. “Hasmed is ahead of us, moving toward the core. We must hurry.”

The three other riders hang back with Pestilence as their spokesperson. “We are not able to go further into the architecture. It will expel us is we try.” He flashes a faint smile. “Try not to die. It would be terribly inconvenient, politically.”

Roisin turns and frowns. “Politically?”

“If you die in the inside the Great Plan, you sort of permeate through the architecture and…” He raises his hands. ”It would not be pretty.”

Astaroth pulls Roisin forward. “Come on, we have to stop him before he reaches the foundation.”

They step through the last trembling outline of the flat and the world falls away. Roisin stumbles, expecting there to be something to step on, but there is no ground to step upon. There is no sky, either, just the endless nothingness overlaid with the concepts of future possibility. The architecture of creation is full of metaphors; threads of purpose, beams of probability, pillars of logic and surrounds of allusion. Roisin finds it both beautiful and terrifying.

“Welcome to the ultimate Truth.” Astaroth appears at her side, except that he seems to be at a thirty degree angle to her, which she finds disconcerting. Registering her discomfort, he shrugs. “Gravity is part of the architecture,” he explains, orienting himself to be parallel with her. “When you’re used to your Elohim side, you’ll be fine with it. Now, we need to catch up to Hasmed, so to navigate the architecture, you need to focus yourself on intention, rather than the act of physically moving your feet up and down.” He waves a hand toward her feet. “Try it. Think of where you want to go. Visualise it.”

“How can I visualise it? I’ve never been here before.”

“But your intent is to stop Hasmed.” Astaroth stares into her eyes. “Visualise him,”

Roisin focuses and the architecture responds by revealing a shimmering path of potential, the destination a beacon ahead. With nothing to mark distance, it could be a hundred metres or tens of thousands of kilometres, she had no way to gauge the distances involved. She releases the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. “This is what the world is.”

“Exactly.” Astaroth nods. “And as your friend would say, ‘all the world’s a stage, and the men and women are merely players.” He waves a hand toward the whole of Creation. “This is what the world was built on.”

Namaan taps a foot with impatience. “And Hasmed is going to break it if you don’t stop looking at the sights and get a move on.” He points toward what would, in any physical space, be the distance.

Hasmed’s trail is unmistakable; a line of collapsing structure, a path of unravelling rules, a wake of void where architecture used to be.

Roisin feels it like a pressure behind her ribs. “He’s tearing it apart.”

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