Chapter 11
Present Aeon
After so much time, Luc could admit that Lila had been right to distrust the Council. He could no longer be angry at her for thinking his trust in them foolish.
Since his induction into their ranks, he’d learned that many of the common angels’ beliefs about the Council and its connection to the Creator were flawed.
But more than that, over time, the Council had grown increasingly disinterested in Luc’s ideas and secretive about any plans that didn’t directly involve him.
Knowledge was being withheld from him, though if it was due to his age as the youngest Council member, or due to his propensity for praising the old ways, or due to Michael’s influence, he couldn’t say.
He was a visionary in a world that was growing more and more insular, concerned solely with protecting what already existed.
A world that had no need of a chosen one and the changes that individual might bring about.
He didn’t understand why their hopes for him had died out; had he not given enough of himself?
Had he not studied and toiled over his projects as a student and as an architect, to the exclusion of all else?
Had he not striven to fulfill the purpose of his existence by whatever means he could, even while not knowing what that purpose was?
Could they not just tell him what they wanted from him? He was done with trying to guess.
Meanwhile, the Creator, whom Luc had never spoken to directly, seemed indifferent to the angels’ affairs. Truly, He might not have cared to be bothered with the soul-split woes of a single angel.
On the other hand, if He was indifferent to the angels’ power structure, He might approve of Luc’s design, regardless of what the Council thought.
There was only one way to find out.
His talk with Lila having given him the idea, and his talk with Hadri having supported this course of action, Luc set a new plan in motion.
Returning to his house, he gathered his Earth blueprints, rolled them, tied them in twine with an outer layer of blank saffron-yellow parchment, and stuck them in his cylindrical beech box for transport.
This time, he bypassed the Great Hall and headed straight to the Library, a rectangular white marble building with a four-pillared portico that bore the names of all twelve guilds, three guilds per pillar.
These inscriptions matched the twelve cupolas that adorned the ceiling of the main reading hall, which extended from one end of the building to the other, and each cupola was painted with a fresco of a different guild at work.
Inscribed in the stone above the entrance to the hall, just before the heavy wooden Library doors, were the words veritas nobis lumen: truth, our light.
And light, truly, was the main theme of the Library’s décor.
Inside, light spilled through forty-eight tall windows, reflecting off the floor-to-ceiling, split-level white bookshelves and the checkered floor of white and gold marble.
The main bookshelves, their frames adorned with gold accents, jutted out from the walls at intervals to form three-sided individual units, filled with scrolls on all sides.
In the tiny alcove between each set of shelves, a white and gold bench provided a small place for study, but this was nothing compared to the long marble tables in the middle of the floor or the individual writing desks in the guild common rooms.
The architect common room, like all other rooms for guild-specific study, flanked the side of the Library, one level below the main reading hall, its entry point a hidden door concealed in the reading hall’s towering bookshelves.
Students could only access the main hall, except under special conditions, but each guild member was allowed entry to their respective common room.
Once he’d entered the hall, Luc headed to the far right corner and located the tiny lock on the inner face of one shelf.
Removing his insignia pin, he stuck it into the grooves of the lock; it fell neatly into place, and when he twisted the pin, the shelves swung out and opened of their own accord, revealing the short wooden staircase behind them.
He retrieved his pin, then took this staircase down to the common room.
Entirely floored and paneled with cherry wood, the room’s interior evoked a warm, informal atmosphere that contrasted with the openness and opulence of the main hall.
Here, there were two long wooden tables for group research, but freestanding bookshelves occupied most of the floor space.
Intricately carved wooden desks lined the walls, their hutches filled with fresh scrolls and pens.
A painted replica of Heaven’s original blueprints decorated the stone ceiling, gold sketches on a dark blue background.
It was a beautiful room, but Luc rarely visited it. Indeed, a few surprised and curious faces peered up from their studies as he entered, but Luc ignored them, elevating his gaze and sweeping across to the private study in a stately, unhurried fashion.
It wasn’t unheard of for Luc to visit the Library to procure materials, but he usually sent a Council messenger to retrieve the items he wanted.
He’d often visited the main reading hall during his time as a student, and when he’d first joined the Council, he’d pored over the common room’s trove of Heaven’s original blueprints, but now he preferred to perform research in the solitude of his personal workshop.
He entered the common room only when presenting new projects to the Creator, not that the architects sitting there would know that.
Still, his presence might be talked about. He intended to go about his plans quickly.
At the door to the Council architect’s private study, he paused, his fingers hovering over the brass letter combination lock built into the door.
Why, when Hadri had escorted him to this room on his first trip there as Council architect, had her name been the only word he could conjure? Since then, a whole aeon had passed, and still, he couldn’t bring himself to change the combination.
Then again, Luc had never been able to rid himself of his obsessions. Once his passions formed, they never dissipated. They simmered. They stewed. They fermented.
They never vanished. If anything, they grew stronger once denied.
Luc hated being denied.
He’d been certain about Lila once, certain that parts of her had been created for him. He was certain about her still, and he was certain about this.
Methodically, he twisted the letters, caressing them in turn.
An “L.” Then, an “I.” Then, another “L.” Lastly, an “A.”
Luc twisted the door handle, and the lock clicked open with ease. He punched the brass button on the other side of the lock, and the lock’s gears clacked as the letters jumbled themselves once more.
He shut the door behind him.
Suddenly, he was alone in the small, but immaculately furnished, study—a cozy room with wall-to-wall bookshelves, a cream and gold rug patterned with ivy, a cream-cushioned wooden armchair with claw-foot gold legs, and a floral stained-glass window overlooking a wooden desk.
His breath trembled as he stepped over to the corner desk and retrieved the round, terracotta oil lamp sitting there.
The enormity of what he was about to do—something no other angel would dare—weighed upon him.
He couldn’t come back from this; that much, he knew.
Luc steeled himself. He wouldn’t falter, not when he was so close to having everything he’d ever wanted.
Well, one thing he’d wanted, anyway.
The Creator’s Chamber, situated beneath the Library, wasn’t painted on the ceiling in the common room. It wasn’t on any map in the archives. Officially, it did not exist, and its location was one of the many secrets Luc had sworn to keep when he’d joined the Council.
To get there, however, was quite simple.
Luc rolled back the cream and gold rug and opened the trap door beneath it. The lamp still held a fair bit of olive oil from its last use, so Luc lit it with the flint and steel from the desk drawer, then journeyed into the Library’s hidden depths.
Descending into the Creator’s Chamber felt like descending into the Void. Having no windows, this chamber alone, in all of Heaven, stayed submerged in darkness. Only when an angel came to commune with the Creator were all its candles lit, bathing the bare stone walls in a gentle golden light.
At the bottom of the wooden staircase, Luc lit the candle nearest to the room’s entrance, sparking a chain reaction all along the wall that revealed the line of candles stretching around the vast chamber.
Each Council member had an access point leading from their guild’s private study, which broke the line of candles at intervals, but some miracle of the Creator’s power allowed for all of the candles to be lit at the spark of one.
In the light dancing on the rough gray stones, Luc noted the other entrances.
Twelve in total. Eleven opportunities for his activities to be discovered.
He would be quick.
Empty space was the prevailing feature of the chamber. Devoid of Heaven’s usual lavish furnishings, the room consisted of nothing but tall candles set in the plainest of brass sconces and, in the murky center of the room, a brass bowl set on an unimaginative, cylindrical stone pedestal.
Luc approached this stone pedestal as he removed his beech box and unpacked the scrolls inside. He placed several of the pages in the bowl and the rest on the pedestal, then took up one lit candle from the line on the wall.
This was one reason the Council approved designs before they were sent off to the Creator. They couldn’t slip ideas under the door of His chambers. He didn’t live among the angels, but in the indecipherable realm of the Void.
In order to pass ideas to Him, those ideas had to burn.
The blueprints in the Library were technically copies, reproduced by the Creator after a design had been accepted. If a design wasn’t accepted, well, then, its contents were lost.
Luc hesitated. An aeon and a half of his work would be gone in mere moments. A matter of breaths. He hoped his sacrifice would be worth it.
Either way, he would take up his destiny and force it into existence. He would pave a path regardless of what the Council, or even the Creator, decided.
Applying the flame to the first few pages of his blueprints, Luc watched the edges of the paper curl and darken till they turned to sparks and rose upward as shimmering aether, then disappeared.
Unlike their counterparts outside of the chamber, these pages left no ash—that refuse the angels tossed into the Void, along with other material fragments.
When the pages had disappeared, he fed the flame a few more.
Then a few more. Over and over, he repeated this process until the last page had vanished.
When he’d finished, he peered up into the dimness of the ceiling. The bowl was empty. His box was empty. His workshop, as well, was mostly empty.
He could do nothing but wait.