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“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at the sky through a broken window. “Heaven doesn’t exactly have its own weather; the Sacred Machinery is meant to generate it… maybe this is some kind of failsafe.”
“A failsafe being built into the Machinery would imply that God knew this might happen one day.”
“Maybe She did.” I craned my neck out of the window and looked back the way we’d come, “I can still see the tower. We’ve barely gone more than a mile.”
Abaddon stepped past me and walked outside again, his boots crunching on the broken glass and debris at our feet. He turned his horned head up and looked at the sky, daring the clouds to attack him again, but they remained still and indifferent. “It does not appear to be reacting to my mere presence,” he said, then he stretched his wings and used them to lift himself up off the ground, barely an inch, kicking up a small cloud of dirt as he went.
Almost immediately, the sky began to animate.
He let himself fall back to his feet, tucked his wings behind his back, and raised his hands as if in mock surrender.
The sky settled.
He looked at me.
“We will have to go on foot,” he grumbled. “Great.”
“That’s… a good thing, though, right?” I asked.
“How is it good that we must walk when we have these?” he cocked his thumb over his shoulder and pointed at his wings.
“Because ifwecan’t fly, it means Medrion can’t fly, either. If he had been able to fly, he may have already reached the Chantry. We have a chance at catching up, now.”
“A valid point, but without wings, how are we supposed to reach those broken, floating pieces? I cannot see the Chantry Building from down here. For all we know, it is up there, somewhere.”
I shook my head. “We’re going to have to figure it out, but so is Medrion, at least.”
“Then we should start moving. The city is much farther away now that we are grounded, and I do not know if and when night will fall. If it does, I want to be prepared for whatever it may bring.”
“I don’t like the way you said that,” I replied, as I emerged from the building to stand next to him. “What do you think is out there?”
“With any luck, nothing,” he said, shrugging, “But I am not ruling out the idea that we are not the most dangerous things out here.”
Dangerous things.
In Heaven?
The thought made me shudder. At any other time, it would’ve been laughable, but between the tortured wailing, sundering of the ground, and inhospitable skies, it was starting to look like areal possibility. Not only was this a strange and unrecognizable land, but it was alsohostile.
Not wanting to waste any more time, we emerged from the shelter of the broken building and started making our way across the desolate landscape. It was difficult to take in and process; my last moments—years—in Heaven were torture, but I knew that outside the Chantry remained the beautiful, peaceful, world I was familiar with. It brought me some comfort to think that no matter what happened to me, Heaven and Earth would continue.
Did God know this would happen?
I wondered how She could bear it.
This place was neither comforting or beautiful, and certainly not peaceful. I had never been to Hell or Purgatory but deep in my heart I knew that this is how they felt; lonely, cold, angry, and punishing of every small bit of joy you could try to feel. I was sure Medrion felt more at home here than he ever had before.
“I didn’t…” I paused, choosing my words. “I would never have imagined Heaven could look so… forsaken.”
“A machine built this place,” he said. “God is dead, and all Her angels are lost. Itisforsaken.” He stopped and jumped on top of a small broken column, using the height to see further ahead. “We should press on. I think I see a bridge.”
“A bridge?”
“There,” he pointed across the way, and along a stretch of broken and battered land marked by jagged rocks, craters, and peaks that seemed to jut out of the ground, was a bridge. A bridge connecting the mainland to one of the nearest floating rocks.
The bridge itself was made of pure Light. It was glowing, but that glow was flickering, fading,fraying. To get to it, we were going to have to walk into a dark valley and then climb out. It looked steep to say the least. We had no guarantee that thisbridge would lead us closer to the Chantry, or if it went straight toward a dead end, but we didn’t have any better options.
“I don’t like the look of it,” I said.
