Semyaza is blissfully non-bothersome for our walk. He doesn’t say a word, and he keeps a fair distance from me. After several minutes pass, and the first set of stairs is defeated, I finally decide to break the silence. “So, you and Abaddon are brothers. How is that possible?”
“We were created as a paired set to be deployed together.”
“Interesting… What was he like before the Abyss? Was he always such an asshole, or is that a recent development?”
Semyaza chuckles. “I honestly can’t recall much of anything that happened in Heaven. It’s like my soul knows him better than I do sometimes. Though, from my few memories of our missions on Earth together, he was always a bit… volatile.”
“Volatile,” I echo, my eyebrows scrunching in thought.
“Yes. He had a temper on him that I had to constantly balance. Likewise, I had tendencies to regress into nihilism that he would help me overcome. Of course, all of that changed after the Fall. He never approved of my decision to leave Heaven, and he tried to talk me out of it multiple times.”
“So… Why did you do it?” I’m relatively sure I’m speaking totheangel who started the whole movement—the domino effect that has me here today. The thought of hearing the story from the horse’s mouth is tantalizing.
“I’ve asked myself that same question countless times, and I still don’t have a straightforward answer.” His voice quiets, losing some of its confidence. “It wasn’t envy, defiance, or boredom. Everything just felt someaningless, all the time, for an eternity. I wanted to live as if I were a mortal, just for one lifetime, to see if earthly hardships could refine my soul. And when I met Layla… everything changed. She was the answer I was seeking, my reason to live. If there’s such a thing as a soulmate, she was mine.”
My heart clenches. Since the very beginning, I suspected the angels can’t feel the full array of emotions humans can. God, I’ve been so fucking wrong. Semyaza is living proof. “But she was a human, wasn’t she? Were you not afraid of losing her one day?”
“I wasveryafraid. I did everything I could to keep her alive, so far beyond the natural human lifespan. I prevented her cells from aging, killed every disease, destroyed a dozen cancers... but… she could still be murdered.”
I’m silent for a moment, letting it sink in.
We’ve made it back to the castle, just coming in from the roof, but I’m not ready to part ways yet. I feel like I’m missing something. His wife, the punishment, murder… How does it all connect? What does Abaddon know that I don’t?
As gently as I can, I push just a small bit. Just enough to see if he’d be willing to talk about it. “What happened to her, Semyaza?”
“How much do you know about the Punishment?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. I’d love to hear your story, if you’d be willing.”
After considering it for a moment, he nods his head, his face taut. “Should we take a seat somewhere quiet?”
“Yes, please.”
So we do, exiting the turret on the castle’s second story. It brings us into an empty room that looks something like a small chapel. There’s a small altar, a few rows of pews, and some rich tapestries lining the walls. They, of course, depict more scenes of angelic battles.
I wipe a layer of dust off the pew before taking a seat.
Semyaza begins, his voice steady and round, like a regal narrator of legends’ past. “Nineteen Watchers abdicated their positions in Heaven with me during the Fall, but we did not all stay together. It is the actions of a select few who ruined everything for us by becoming too involved in human affairs. They freely gave out forbidden knowledge, created armies of nephilim, wrought destruction, and changed the course of human history. When they did not heed the warnings of the Principalities of Earth, those four archangels took it upon themselves tocomplain to the Almighty.”
His voice changes, drifting from the levelness of before, becoming tainted with anger. “Our kind knows not to ask for his judgment, as his intervention is often extreme. His wrath is not worth risking—and wrathful he was. He chose to not only punish the Watchers with a sentence fit for immortals, but also to obliterate all remnants of our influence... Michael went to Adonai to slaughter the mortal inhabitants, send the lower angels to a long death, and collect the archangel Watchers for our Punishment; Gabriel did the same for those of us on Earth. With the Almighty loaning them his strength and power to do such, nobody stood a chance of opposition.”
I realize, then, that this angel has become a ghost of someone who was once courageous and indomitable. He’s genuinely struggling, just barely keeping his voice steady enough to tell his story, and I feel great pity for him. These events—this complete tragedy—have utterly destroyed him.
I wish there was something I could do to help him, but I don’t even know what to say to someone who has suffered so profoundly. Even if I know loss, I can’t imagine multiple lifetimes’ worth of unending pain. “Semyaza… I am so,sosorry.”
“Don’t be,” he corrects me, quietly, but not without a sternness in the edge of his voice. “I led the charge out of Heaven. I was responsible for everyone who followed me. My punishment was deserved.”
“You can’t hold yourself responsible for everyone. They made their own choices.” I reach a hand out, gently placing it on his shoulder, and it cracks something inside him wide open. A heart-wrenching sob bubbles out of his chest.
“Layla didn’t. She was innocent.” His breath shudders. “Ourchildrenwere innocent.”
Tears well in my eyes as I watch him, this once-mighty warrior, fall apart in front of me.
When my mother died, there were so many days when all I could feel was the loss of her. For so long, the grief overshadowed everything else in life. I thought I might never get past it, but I did, eventually.Though the pain is never truly gone, I’ve found other ways to keep going.
So I tell Semyaza what my father once told me in the hopes it can bring him some comfort, too. “Death is a consequence of living. Knowing the pain of it means to have lived.”
He looks at me, his bloodshot eyes skimming the tears on my face, before he says solemnly, “Then I have lived my life, and I no longer wish to continue it any further.”
