Chapter 11 #2
“What?” said the angel of healing first, his eyes wide, his mouth opening and spluttering. “Gabriel—” Except Gabriel pulled away from him entirely to climb onto his bare feet, then putting one over the other, approaching Michael, the towering chief, the angel of strength. “What are you saying?”
“I said that I won’t end the world,” Gabriel said, and he looked up at Michael as the prince inched his face to stare back, his eyes as wide as Raphael’s but overbrimming with rage.
Michael, tense, slow, asked, “You’re going to rebel?”
“I want,” Gabriel answered, “to speak to Mary—”
“You don’t answer to Mary,” Michael snapped. “You answer to God, Gabriel. Our Father. The Lord and Creator of everything.”
“I will answer to Him,” said Gabriel, “after I speak with Mary.”
Uriel chuckled and now he was the one stepping between Gabriel and Michael with a twist of amusement on his lips.
“Well, you can take Raphael with you to destroy the world of man, but I won’t leave this place, nor will Gabriel.
What I saw in those ten years that the Lord had me watch them disgusted me.
They starve each other, they harm their oldest and youngest, and they’ve created weapons so destructive that even I can’t comprehend them.
Will you teach God’s army about firearms, Michael, or will you allow them to descend to Earth with our ancient swords and spears?
Will you tell the angels that the Earth and man we knew are long gone, that the world of prophets and Eden and miracles died long ago?
Will you show them how the humans have already surpassed us in their few centuries alive, or will you allow the angels to realize it the moment a nuclear light is pointed in their faces? ”
Now, it was Raphael, climbing wobbly to his feet, who snapped, “Uriel, you’re not making any sense.” He took his staff with both hands, and he wavered in place, so much that Gabriel found himself moving toward him quickly so that he could keep the healer angel upright.
“I avoided seeing the Earth since the beginning of their last century,” Uriel elaborated flatly.
“Their wars filled me with such rage that I vowed to never look at the humans again, but God commanded it, and now I know that the world has only grown so much more wicked. And I’m certain the Lord knows the trip wasn’t going to convince me of apocalypse but that it would only strengthen my resolve against it — despite that, He sent me.
He sent me to learn that, however cleansed they are of sin, I will always remember the destruction the humans have caused, how they’ve created evils even greater than the devil’s. ”
“Human weaponry is weak against the will of God,” Michael said.
“You’re blinded by spectacle, like a child.
” Uriel scoffed, laughed. “And speak all you want. It doesn’t change that you’ve been commanded to do something and you must follow orders or risk being tortured by our Father.
” With one step forward, the chief prince brought his face even closer to Uriel’s, and he added, quietly, “And if you’re too rebellious to save yourself, then what about Dina?
” At this, the oldest angel tensed. “Will you allow me to find Dina on Earth and have him punished for trying to halt the apocalypse? That’s what you sent him to do, isn’t it, Uriel? ”
Gritting his teeth, Uriel managed a strained, “Michael.” Behind the chief prince, a door was opening, and there was an angel there, shaped like an elderly man in a long robe.
“You’ve seen that God lies to you, and you choose to ignore it.
And you still kill for Him, believing He’ll keep His promise to save you, save you from what you’ve done. ”
“All of you,” Metatron barked. “What are you arguing about? The Lord has ordered you to mount the horses of the end.”
Uriel continued: “But there’s a part of me that pities you.
I know that hopelessness. Billions of years, I lied to myself and smothered the doubt that there could ever be more than this.
I still believe rebellion is death and is worse than death and is suicide, one of God’s most detested sins.
But how far can you follow your Lord before seeing He has merely destroyed you and everything you’ve ever loved using your own hands? ”
Metatron grunted, then stormed inside, revealing Phanuel close behind, face twisted with curved brows and parted lips, sad and fearful; he must’ve heard Uriel’s words.
“I said,” the human-angel called, “that the horses are prepared, and there is no time for you four to argue in here. You all see why God prefers man over the bratty children you angels can be?” Though the elder wasn’t armored, Phanuel was and the corridor of angels was as well.
Uriel murmured, “That’s not what you said, Enoch.” Then he stepped away and took some steps toward the door in capitulation while Michael swallowed thick, looking at the ground, his muscles cold, his blood missing, his body empty.
Nearby, Gabriel touched Raphael’s arm and told him quietly, “I want to speak to Mary.”
“Please,” Raphael whispered, “don’t say that to Enoch. Don’t say that to God. Now is not the time to rebel. I implore you, Gabriel.”
Gabriel wanted to say, ‘My heart doubts the end times. Once, God said a flood would kill all of man. Then, He said all of man was saved with the sacrifice of His son, but now He will destroy them all.’ His heart ached.
‘Mary, can you soothe my doubt?’ One day, you begin to doubt in God, and then loving Him is never really the same.
Believing in Him, even surrounded by faithful angels, is never the same.
The memory of doubt will follow you forever.
You will pray, drowned in the memory of just not believing how you used to.
And so Gabriel forced himself to stop thinking of God’s Mother, but then he thought of his Father, and he couldn’t help the feeling that — ‘If I ever come to love you again, I will still remember the day that I stopped. I will remember what you did, and what you didn’t do. ’
Michael answered Enoch quietly, “There are some things I must discuss with the army first, but Raphael and Gabriel may go ahead.” He didn’t bother to look at the two angels in question.
And when Metatron began to argue, Michael emphasized, “This is imperative, Metatron. And there is more time than you think. I already have eyes on the anti-Christ.” His heart was in his ears, echoing, echoing.
‘You think my pride makes me foolish, but it does not,’ Satan had said to Michael once. ‘Suicide,’ Uriel had said.
Uriel was silent, Gabriel was silent, and Raphael was too, and Metatron smiled at this, surely feeling like a chief prince as he ordered, “Then let us go with God.”
There were horses waiting for them — armored, winged. The Lord had created them for this, the first animals to appear in Heaven. Four of them for the princes, the horsemen.