Chapter 35 #3
The architect had saved him from death. He’d lied to him. He’d betrayed him. But he’d also taken the sword wound that was meant for him. Why?
“Hadri,” he whispered, mostly to himself. Tears blurred his vision. “What did you do?”
A sharp intake of breath drew Luc’s attention.
Michael stood on the platform a few paces away. He hadn’t stabbed Luc while Hadri was dying—Luc would give him that—but how could he just stand there? Did he not realize what he’d done?
“You did this,” Luc hissed.
Michael had been studying Hadri’s body with an inscrutable expression, but the moment Luc spoke, he stiffened.
“No. You did.”
“Hadri was innocent!”
“No friend of yours is innocent.” Michael narrowed his eyes.
“Hadri knew what you were long ago, but he convinced us to keep you here. Let you grow up. Let you have a chance. Give you anything you wanted so you had no reason to harm us. You were his responsibility, you see. He was tasked with watching you and pushing you in the right directions. Maybe you fooled him. Maybe he was in league with you by the end. Either way, he failed, and now Heaven and Earth will pay the price for his failure.” He dipped his gaze back to Hadri’s body, disdain marring his features.
Luc’s gut twisted.
Perhaps he should have felt anger at Hadri for lying to him, but Michael’s words swept over him; they vanished into the aether along with Hadri’s soul.
Luc heard nothing.
He saw, instead, Michael’s contempt aimed at Hadri’s corpse, and he rose to his feet, breath pounding in his ears. In the unbearable silence left in Hadri’s wake.
Hadri, who’d only aspired to eat honeyed cakes and take long walks with his friends. Hadri, who’d been destroyed in Luc’s place. His soul cast into the aether to…to where?
What happened when an angel lost their soul?
Luc didn’t know—or he did know and couldn’t remember. But he’d make sure Michael found out.
It wasn’t even a conscious decision, letting his rage pour out of him. Letting it warp him into a creature that had been left out of Earth’s final blueprints: a winged, scaled, clawed monstrosity of red and gold. Fury embodied.
Luc opened his mouth and roared, breathing out fire. Beneath him, the foundations of Heaven trembled, and below Michael’s feet, the marble cracked, knocking him off balance.
Recovering, the warrior swooped into the aether, and Luc rose to meet him, flapping his savage wings. A whirlwind of fire and smoke encircled them, blocking out the aether above and the ground below.
Luc lunged for Michael, his talons ripping the warrior’s robes, but Michael retreated into the thick black smoke.
Luc tried to break through it, to find Michael, to crush his bones, to tear him apart, but he couldn’t escape the darkness.
The aether crackled, answering his enraged roars with ominous growls.
Soon, he was caught in its chaotic momentum, batted about in a wind tunnel of his own making.
The more his fury grew, the more his control slipped; he couldn’t wrangle the elements he’d created, and as rage gave way to panic, he shifted back into his angelic form. Another half-conscious decision.
By then, he’d lost track of his location relative to Heaven’s surface. Periodic flashes of light allowed him to glimpse the clouds surrounding him, but nothing more. Disoriented, he saw the light of Michael’s sword just before the blow came.
Then, only darkness.
When Luc regained consciousness, he’d fallen out of Heaven’s atmosphere. Beyond Heaven’s borders into the Void, and yet…he hadn’t been swallowed up. He hadn’t been snuffed out, though he didn’t have his sword. Though he’d left it with Braun in his haste to chase after Michael.
Luc spread his wings to stop his descent.
Braun would be fine, right? Michael wouldn’t…There was no need to…The young warrior was harmless.
Luc shook himself. As if that mattered. He’d fallen out of Heaven. Out of it—and he hadn’t been consumed. It was unheard of.
Above him, a stark streak of white split the darkness in two, and he surmised that his fall had created it. Just like his sword had driven back the darkness when he’d tested it, his body now kept the darkness at bay.
But that would mean…the Void was in him.
Luc hung in the nothingness, processing this new information. Or old information—something he’d known the moment he’d seen the dead flower and his reflection in the sword, but didn’t want to believe.
Luc shook himself again, in no mood to dwell on what it meant to have the Void inside of him.
He had more pressing matters to attend to, like how he could re-enter Heaven and catch Michael off his guard.
This time, he would stay level-headed; he wouldn’t create wind tunnels and aether he couldn’t see through.
Luc ascended along the bare white path, but when he reached Heaven’s borders, he couldn’t penetrate them.
He couldn’t even see Heaven through the golden aether, and when he flew into it, the aether spit him out in a burst of light and a sizzle of energy.
That same sizzle of energy he’d felt when he’d tried to escape the barrier surrounding his home.
In a flash, Luc retrieved Lila’s crystal. He summoned fire and tried to dissolve the barrier as he’d done before.
It didn’t work. Either the barrier was too large and the crystal too small, or the barrier keeping him out of Heaven was stronger than the one that had contained him at his house.
Nonetheless, he flung himself at it again and again, though his muscles ached and his head pounded and his wounds stung.
Finally, having no luck with Heaven’s borders, Luc struck out at the darkness instead. It, at least, moved when he commanded it to. It rumbled with discontent, but peeled back, revealing the blank slate beneath.
When Luc had exhausted his body and his rage and could see only a blank white expanse far into the horizon, stretching the breadth of Heaven, he stopped. Heaving from his efforts, he hung there in the great expanse, alone, suspended between Heaven and the Void.
Banished, or so it seemed, Luc couldn’t go forward; he could only go back, and after a time, he descended into the depths where the Void reigned.
He descended and descended until he found a place far enough from Heaven that he didn’t have to be tormented by its sight, but close enough that he could look up and view its light in the distance.
There, he shut his eyes, reached out his hand, and began to create.
First, earth beneath his feet; then, sky above his head; then, oceans; then, mountains.
He envisioned a mixture of Heaven and Earth elements, blended into a paradise to rival both places. But when he opened his eyes, he saw no beauty at all.
His replica of the Great Hall stood in ruins, the stone crumbling and scarred. Rocky and barren, the ground bore no plants. The murky sea teemed with violent swells, and in the distance, charred black mountains spouted fire. Ash clouded the aether.
Though the ground beneath Luc’s feet was solid, everything he’d created was the color of death.