Twisting away from the still-thrashing Madach, Remy scrambled for the battle-axe. Maybe this was what Hell was for him, one countless battle after another, feeling his humanity slipping away inch by inch.
Suroth opened his mouth to speak, his jaw hanging crookedly. It looked quite painful as he forced the words from his mouth.
“With the end… I bring about the beginning,” the Nomad croaked and extended the sword, pointing the broken blade at Remy.
Remy tensed to fly and was shocked when Suroth changed the direction of the blade, pivoting to point it at the sarcophagus.
Snaking arcs of angelic power emerged from beneath the angel’s wet and tattered robes, tentacles of magick that snaked down the length of his arm, flowing into the hand that clutched the broken sword.
A blast of angel fire, far stronger than anything the Nomad had conjured yet struck the front of Lucifer’s personal prison.
The chamber was filled with a searing blue light, a magickal energy continued to flow from some vast reservoir within the Nomad leader.
Remy knew what was happening, and that it was now too late to stop it.
Suroth was sacrificing his angelic life force and adding it to the magick his kind had mastered so many millennia ago. The once-mighty Nomad leader had begun to wither, his body mass dwindling away to nothing before Remy’s eyes.
Lucifer’s pall had begun to glow white, the intense heat radiating from the stone prison causing the moisture from the melting ice to evaporate, filling the chamber with a roiling steam that made it nearly impossible to see what was happening.
Remy was drawn to the sarcophagus, flapping his wings aggressively to disperse the hindering mist. He was at least three feet from the pall when the magick pouring from Suroth abruptly ceased. A thunderous blast followed as the case exploded, lifting him off his feet and tossing him through the air.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Knowing that the unthinkable had occurred, Remy stood.
The steam had begun to fade, a roiling layer of fog undulating like something alive close to the chamber floor. He moved toward where the stone coffin had once stood, broken pieces now scattered about the floor.
As he moved closer, he saw kneeling amongst the fog and rubble, the form of a man. Remy froze, staring at the shape that suddenly stood and turned to face him.
It was Madach who stood in the remains of the sarcophagus.
Remy’s angelic instinct was immediately on alert. Something is wrong—horribly, horribly wrong, he thought as he strode closer, ignoring the pain that attempted to cripple his body.
Standing beside Madach, Remy scanned the ground, finding only the broken pieces of the Morningstar’s imprisonment.
Lucifer was nowhere to be found.
Remy felt their presence just as the screaming began.
Horrible shrieks and wails echoed through the prison chamber, and he turned toward the cries of misery.
The Thrones hovered in the air, their round, roiling bodies crackling with repressed Heavenly power. Tendrils of humming energy leapt from their bodies, lashing out at any and all who dared come too close.
The fallen screamed as they died. They came en masse, unable to stop themselves from rushing toward the creatures of Heaven, hands outstretched, desperate to once again touch the light of the Almighty.
As the fallen were killed, their once-divine forms exploding into clouds of ash, the Thrones paid little attention to their demise. All eyes—each and every one of the large, piercing orbs that covered the seething masses of power—were fixed upon Remy.
He could feel their gazes burning into his flesh and then he heard their roaring command.
“End his life.”
Their voices were overwhelming, like every sound in existence—the beautiful and the harsh, the melodic and the earsplittingly painful, all combined to give them voice.
Remy immediately dropped the battle-axe at his feet, bending forward, covering his ears with his hands, though it did him little good, for the Thrones spoke inside his head as well.
“I… don’t understand,” Remy cried. It took every bit of strength he had remaining to stay on his feet.
“Do as we command before it is too late,” the Thrones cried. It was like having an atomic weapon set off inside his skull.
Still bent over, Remy looked up into the multiple eyes of his tormentors, squinting through their radiance as he attempted to understand what they wanted of him.
“I don’t…”
The orbs of divine power surged closer, tentacles of energy moving across the ground, bodies of dead fallen exploding to drifting bits of nothing at their pernicious touch.
“There was always a fear that something of this magnitude would occur,” the Thrones announced. “So he was removed. Placed where he would no longer be a threat… where he could do no harm.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Remy screamed, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth. His nose and ears were leaking from the Thrones’ assault, and he wanted it to stop, but most of all he wanted to understand.
“He was never supposed to return here.”
“Tell me who you’re talking about!” Remy cried, lurching toward the emissaries from Heaven.
“There is no time!” the Thrones wailed, one of the snaking appendages of fiery energy touching something on the ground and hurling it at him.
Remy caught the object, surprised at the sudden wave of familiarity he experienced on contact. He gripped the pistol tightly in his hand, the familiar voice of the weapon present inside his head again.
Kill him!
The eyes were looking past him, focusing on the object of their obsession, and Remy slowly turned to gaze at the pathetic form of Madach. The fallen angel stood slump shouldered, his body beaten and lacerated, his clothes hanging from his broken shape in bloodstained tatters.
He seemed to be in a sort of trance, staring down at the shattered remains of Lucifer’s pall.
“Him?” Remy asked, turning back to the Thrones. “You want me to kill Madach?”
The Colt became euphoric, not because of the why or whom it was to be used upon, but because it had the opportunity to do what it had been created for. It urged Remy on, telling him in a hissing voice like radio static to do as he was told.
Remy ignored the Pitiless, waiting for some sort of answer, something that would make sense of the murderous act that the Thrones were demanding of him.
And then Madach began to chuckle.
Remy turned away from Heaven’s emissaries to look at the fallen angel.
He was hunched no longer, standing perfectly straight, with his hands hanging down at his sides.
“Madach?” Remy questioned, not seeing the humor.
“It’s all clear to me now,” Madach stated, smiling so wide that it seemed to split his face.
“Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!” the Thrones shrieked inside his head. Through eyes tearing with pain, Remy watched Madach.
“I’m free,” he said, his eyes glinting a golden yellow.
A million questions filled Remy’s head, but he knew that there wasn’t time for a one of them.
The wounds—the cuts and abrasions—that the fallen had received during his tribulations in the underworld had begun to glow. An eerie white light starting to seep from somewhere inside him.
No longer trusting Remy to do what they asked, the Thrones made their move. Their spherical bodies began to glow like miniature suns, as they merged their masses to form one enormous globe of eyes and fire.
A tentacle of fire grew from the burning surface, lashing out like a whip. Remy barely avoided the ferocious attack, his wings smoldering with the intensity of the heat as he leapt from harm’s way. He rolled onto his back, extinguishing the unearthly fire eating at his wings.