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We had been sent to another tower, another beacon. This one though, was entirely devoid of Light. The sky, like the beacon, was dark, a thick mantle of grey clouds choking the sunlight that should have been gracing the world rolling away from us.
Faint shafts of light broke through the cloud layer sporadically, mostly serving to deepen the shadows rather than illuminate them. It wasn’t much, but it was enough by which to see the utter desolation of this place.
No, not just desolation; madness.
The world wasn’t solid beneath our feet. Instead, it looked like an earthquake had torn the ground asunder, whole chunks were just missing,gone.Massive craters pocked the landscape, craters that seemed impossibly deep—and above them? Floating in the sky, listless, were giant rocks.
Rocks on which sat ruined buildings, collapsed towers, and structures that had been broken and hollowed out. This world wasn’t just desolate, it was broken; cracked. I didn’t know how such a thing could’ve happened, how entire parts of the ground could now be floating in the air, separated from each other.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst was the wailing. It was a constant sound—distant enough that I could hear it, but not close enough that I could pinpoint its source. It was somewhere out there, ahead of us, somewhere in the ruins of the Sacred City; the place I once called home.
They were people.
Voices.
Suffering.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SARAKIEL
Icouldn’t block it out, it was everywhere, and it never ended. A chorus of groans, and moans, and cries. Occasionally a single voice would rise up over the others, always begging for help; for someone, anyone, to come and help.
For the second time in a much too short period, my heart broke.
“What…” I said, then choked on the word. “What… happened here?”
“Welcome to the wake of God’s passing,” said Abaddon. “Welcomehome.”
“But this… this isn’t home. It can’t be. Are we in purgatory, somehow?”
Abaddon shook his head. “I would recognize this place no matter what state it was in. We have arrived in the Sacred City, though I suggest we do not linger. Medrion is out there, somewhere, and we do not know if we will be pulled back to Earth at a moment’s notice.”
“Can that happen?”
Abaddon looked across at me, his eyes betraying the sorrow his voice kept in check at seeing Heaven as it was. “I do notknow, but we were kicked out once, it would be wise to consider that it remains a possibility.”
The wailing wouldn’t stop. I covered my ears, but it wasn’t enough to block it out. Part of me wanted to know where—and who—it was coming from, and if I could somehow help them; but the other part of me didn’t want to know and was horrified to find out. I wrestled with my thoughts and shook my head.
We were here to stop Medrion and start the Machinery, with any luck that would also fix the rest of Heaven’s problems. “Alright,” I said, “We have to get to the Chantry.”
Abaddon unfurled his bat-like wings and stretched them out fully. “I will lead,” he said, “Stay close.”
He rushed toward the edge of the tower, and vaulted off, disappearing for a few seconds before shooting back up and floating in the air in front of me. I followed suit, getting a running jump of my own and leaping over the tower’s edge.
Heaven was torn, but despite the chaos surrounding us it was a joy to be able to fly there again; it felt lighter and so much more effortless than flying on Earth. I closed my eyes and took a moment to relish the feeling before following Abaddon.
Together we headed deeper into what was left of our home, towards the sounds of suffering, towards Medrion… and towards Lucifer.
We hadn’t been flying for long when we noticed the sky changing. The still clouds began to grumble and churn, as if we’d suddenly woken them up. The winds picked up, ruffling the feathers of my wings, and flashes of angry, red-violet lightning surged around us.
A whip-crack of light suddenly came arcing down, shooting past me so closely I thought it wastryingto hit me. When the second one came, I knew, something definitely wasn’t right about this. Windspeeds continued to pick up, the lightning grewmore and more intense, and ice-cold hail began to fall and strike us all over.
Abaddon and I had no choice but to land and find cover in a turned over building with broken walls and windows. We hurried inside to take shelter from the wind, the lightning, and the icy hail, only for it to instantly dissipate the moment we found refuge from it.
Instead of churning skies, whipping lightning, and small, frozen knives falling at us from the sky, there were only thick, lazy clouds and a distant grumble of thunder. It sounded almost like a threat. I tried to stop Abaddon from flying back out, but he took two steps, leapt into the air, and was almost immediately pelted by hail again. He returned to the dilapidated building, swearing and shaking ice off his shoulders. “A defense mechanism?” he asked.
