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“It’s not that simple,” Micah said, “The backdoor is locked, only cherubs have keys.”
Helena shook her head. “Keys to get in to Heaven?” she asked.
“Yes, and if Medrion is gathering Light, then he must have found a cherub willing to give him access.”
“He hasn’t found one,” Azrael said, “He’s coming here because he knows where one is.”
Micah took a deep breath, then nodded. “I don’t know where the rest of my kind are. We were already few in number, but with no way to communicate… It stands to reason that he has not found another of my kind, and he is coming for me.”
“I don’t understand,” said Helena, “Why you have not come to me with this information earlier?””
“I’m sorry, but there wasn’t a reason to. Heaven is inert… without God, the Machine won’t work. I thought it was useless to us.”
“And now you think differently?”
“I had not imagined that Medrion knew about any of this, let alone that he was attempting it. Knowing what we know now, it’s imperative that we stop him.”
This was the first time I had felt tension between Micah and Helena. He was her most trusted ally, her companion, but some of that trust had broken just now. Maybe Micah did have good reasons for withholding, maybe he hadn’t wanted to give her false hope.
Or maybe he knew something we didn’t.
“How does this work, then?” asked the Tyrant. “Do we all stand in a circle andsing, or something?”
“One step at a time,” said Micah. “Even if we could get back to Heaven, is that what we want to do? We needed to know if Lucifer was still chained to the pit, but if Medrion is working his way up there then we can make a pretty good guess that heis. Should we not simply stop Medrion, and leave Lucifer to his prison?”
“I…no, we still need Lucifer… right?” The words came from somewhere in the back of my mind. I knew Micah’s suggestion made sense, but it felt wrong.
“Why do we need him?” asked the Tyrant.
“He built the machine,” I said, “And Micah said it himself; his power is the closest to God of any of ours. If anyone in the entire universe can restart Heaven’s Sacred Machines, it’s Lucifer.”
Another pause moved through the room like a silent specter. I turned my eyes to the floor. There was no reason for me to believe my own words, but something within me told me they were true. Not just that, but it felt like this was the course of action wehadto take. If we could somehow restart Heaven, it was our duty to try.
“Even if we agree to do this,” Micah said, choosing his words carefully, “We would only have enough energy to send one, perhaps two angels.”
“So, we gather enough power, send an angel back to Heaven,” I said, “Find Lucifer, free him, and restart the machine so we can all go home—and beat Medrion to the punch, too. Easy.”
“That’s best-case scenario,” Micah said. “The absolute best.”
“Which means it won’t be that easy,” said the Tyrant, crossing his arms. “This mission will be rife with problems, not to mention that we are discussing the release of Lucifer; a being who has had a very long time to stew over his regrets.”
“If Medrion is willing then it must be worth the risk,” said Helena. “I don’t know how much power you think we’ll need, but there are many of us here in my Bastion. We’ll summon those who aren’t injured and see if we can’t open a door to Heaven.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” I asked.
Helena looked over at me. “As Micah said… one step at a time.”
“Are we all forgetting Kalmiya just told us Medrion is on his way here?” the Tyrant asked. “We’ll need all the Light we can muster if we have any hope of surviving the attack.”
Helena shook her head. “We are going to somehow have to do both things at once. Our fate depends on it.”
She looked confident when she spoke, but I could tell, she didn’t expect this would work. For all her power and grace, I could see the fear in her.
Fear.
It was a fear we shared.
Fear that Medrion knew of the way into Heaven.
