Chapter 18 Present Aeon
Present Aeon
As Luc neared his house, having trudged up and down the length of Heaven—in search of what, he didn’t know; a sign, perhaps, that he should have seen this coming—he found himself hoping that if he lay down and woke up again, everything he’d seen would vanish.
A dream, a figment, it would be. Nothing more.
Unfortunately, the figure of his neighbor Braun waiting in front of his house was very much real.
The scrawny young warrior had an irritating habit of fawning over Luc, though he’d grown on him over time.
Perhaps he reminded Luc of himself at that age—over-eager to impress—though Braun possessed a desperation Luc never had need of.
Like now. Braun was flinging himself against Luc’s door, his unruly black hair erupting from its knot.
Luc used to think he only saw Braun when he’d just come back from sparring practice, but now he recognized unkempt as the normal state of Braun’s dress: a twisted gold belt and crumpled white robes.
“I’m sorry, Master Lucifer! I tried to stop them, but—”
“Stop who?” Luc frowned.
“The warriors!” Braun panted. “They said it was Master Michael’s orders, sir. But I tried to stop them, sir! I told them you weren’t at home.”
“Move.”
“Sir?”
“Move!”
Luc shoved the boy away from the door.
“Uh…y-yes, sir.” Braun’s ramblings followed him inside. “They took some stuff, but they said they would be back. I don’t think they found what they were looking for.” The boy’s words faded into the aether.
Luc clenched his fists.
As he stepped into the study, crunching glass underfoot, he saw that his home had been wrecked.
The glass encasing his wall-to-wall bookshelves had been smashed, and his research scrolls lay twisted and torn on the marble floor.
Glass jars that normally lined the bottom shelves, filled with materials for conducting chemical experiments and embellishments such as gemstones, lay cracked on the marble, leaking out their contents.
Even his plant samples had been swept to the ground, where their painted pots lay shattered in glistening shards.
But none of this disturbed Luc so much as the three large wooden tables that stretched to three-fourths of the study’s width. They should have been littered with Luc’s prototypes of Earth, but instead they were bare as stone. Picked clean.
Luc’s blueprints had been burned, and now the rest of his work on Earth was gone as well.
The realization tore at his throat, but he had no time to swallow it, and it had nowhere to go.
Too much rage already coursed through him, and two warriors appeared in the doorway.
They towered over Braun, filled with the stern impassiveness of hardened patrol angels.
Gold-hilted swords gleamed at their sides.
“Master Lucifer, your presence is requested in the Artisanal Chamber,” one informed him. “We’re here to escort you.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Luc twisted his words into a snarl. “I’ll be delighted to pay Michael a visit.”