At this time of night, the Numen Citadel should have been asleep, but when she arrived across the Bridge, Numen filled the streets. They reverently watched a procession of Numen who silently marched down the street. She could see that those on the road had their hoods raised with black masks covering their lower faces. Everyone did.
On the road, six Guardians carried a casket past her.
“Funeral procession.”
She jumped. Ethan appeared next to her.
He didn’t look at Dani, but watched as another casket proceeded
past.
“This is a funeral?” she asked. “For who?”
“For those who gave their lives.”
Dani remembered that a Guardian died. Titus, wasn’t it? But now
two caskets passed and more were coming. “All of these people…?” “Some within the past week.” He said. “Others more recently. We
lose soldiers frequently. Sometimes it’s only a few. This time, it was three
Powers, a Natural, and,” he paused, biting back a change in his voice, “a
Guardian.”
She felt terrible for him. The look on his face…
“Were you close?”
He frowned, nodding. “Titus was a Guardian when I arrived. He’s
one of the few left I knew when I first came here.”
“Ethan, I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “We lose people, Dani. It’s the nature of who we
are.”
“Asaph told me they rarely get bodies back.” She realized how
callous it was to say that. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve—.”
“It’s okay.” He told her. “You’re right: we don’t always get their
bodies back. We didn’t get Titus. Instead, we retrieve their weapons or we
bury all their personal belongings. The funerals aren’t for them. They’re for
us. It’s our way to let go.”
“Where are they taking them?”
Waving for her to follow, he whispered, “Let me show you. You
should see it for yourself.”
Together, they followed the procession as the crowd dispersed.
Those involved in the burial bore their dead through the streets until they
passed into the Fane, looping around the statue of Gabriel and through a
vault in the back. Ethan led her after them down the stairs.
The stairwell was wide; sloped downward dozens of flights. Ethan
removed a torch from the wall, using it to light the way. They continued
down into the mountain and the air became cool and damp against her
skin. A light below grew as they neared the bottom, which opened into the
mouth of a much larger chamber. Dani gasped.
A cavern large enough to fit a stadium was hollowed out underneath
the city. Dani stared up at the stalactites the size of eighteen-wheelers
hanging from the ceiling. Staircases cut cleanly into the floor wove down in
between largely formed stalagmites and rock faces, some hollowed for
lights. Lanterns glowed sapphire blue here, filling the space bright enough
that she could see the funeral processions. It was almost beautiful. But dotted throughout the subterranean catacombs were dozens
upon dozens of tombs. Vaults of the dead lined the walls. Even as she
watched, six bearers lifted from the ground and hovered up to place a casket
into its resting place a hundred feet above the floor.
“We call it the Hypogeum.” He said. “It’s the resting place of our
dead.”
The Guardians who brought Titus’ casket took it to the far side of the
necropolis, laying him to rest within one of the vaults. As they enclosed him,
the bearers removed their hoods and masks. She recognized one of them as
Mastema. He spoke in soft, low tones with another. Kleos. His face was
worn with grief.
Mastema comforted him, placing a hand on his shoulder
sympathetically. Suddenly, Dani didn’t dislike her Guardian half as much.
Maybe he wasn’t all bad, though she was sure that opinion would change. “The caves over there lead to the adamant mines,” he pointed, “but
there’s something else I want to show you.”
The two of them took a staircase to the right, descending a separate
set of steps away from the crypts. The stairs arched towards a wall, bringing them down to the floor in front of a section of the cave that had no tombs. Instead, it was flat, as if sanded down perfectly smooth. Dani faced what at first she thought were cave drawings. The wall section was covered in them. The blue lanterns illuminated the etched symbols she recognized as the angelic language magically tattooed on her skin. Except now, each symbol was the size of her hand and the script flowed across the surface in a neverending stream. It went several stories up. She couldn’t even see the top in
the dark.
“What is this?”
“Something you should know.” Ethan told her. “You asked Elder
Castus about the angels and the War in Heaven. I brought you here to give
you answers. Some, at least.”
She stared at the wall. “This is, what, some kind of prehistoric
history textbook? Is it about the angels?”
He smirked, shrugging. “In a way, yes. It tells their story.” “Who wrote it?”
“They did.”
She pressed her hand against the symbols. Someone etched them
into the stone and the sheer edges felt like they weren’t just cut but stamped
into it. Man-made tools couldn’t do that. As her hands brushed across them,
she realized that despite being inside the cool cavern, they were warm to the
touch; as if someone just put them there.
“I can’t read it.” She said.
“Not many can. Even the Elders have a hard time. They periodically
come down here to try to decipher it.” He gestured upward. “But from what
we can tell, they’ve been here since the first Numen set foot in Empyrean.” “This has been here for centuries?”
“More like millennia, maybe longer.” Ethan commented. “We don’t
know.”
“What does it say?”
He stared up at the hieroglyphs, a serious tone in his voice. “It tells
us that before humanity came into existence, God created the Heavens and
the Earth. He formed the universe out of the void of chaos. It was peaceful;
that the angels would sing and the whole universe heard it.”
“Sing?”
“They called it the eternal song; the symphony of the world.
Whatever angels were, they would sing in a way that created things—bring
them into existence—and then bring them to God to show their love. Every
time the text talks about angels, it describes them singing everything into
creation. Songs even created emotions: love, peace, happiness, friendship.” “Sounds nice.” Dani murmured.
“But the story says that something went wrong.” He pointed to
another part. “There was a War. It was the very first war; the first act of
violence in Creation. It pitted brother and sister against one another; angel
against angel. It says the War waged between two sides. One side followed
Heaven. The other side refers to the adversary.”
“The adversary?”
“The Devil. Satan. When he was an angel, he was referred to as
Lucifer, the Bringer of the First Dawn.”
“The Devil is an angel?”
“Was an angel.” He corrected. “He was God’s greatest warrior; one
of His very first creations. This tells us that Lucifer became angry with God.
&nb
sp; We don’t know why. We can’t understand that part. What we do know is
Lucifer rebelled and with him, a third of the angels. The defiance was so
great it shocked Heaven. The angels in response rallied around another:
Lucifer’s younger brother, Michael.”
“The Archangel Michael from the Bible?”
“Yes. The Elders don’t know at this point what the inscription says,
but from what they told us, the two sides fought. It describes a different
song sung by the angels, one that had never been before: a battle hymn. We
think it refers here to Lucifer. From what we can tell, he called Heaven into
war. And from there, the two sides clashed.”
He kept going. “They fought across C reation. They destroyed one
another. But, in the end, Lucifer was defeated. Michael and the other
archangels, including Gabriel, cast him and his army down. They
slaughtered most of them, but lost so many of their own angels became
nearly extinct.”
“And then Lucifer was punished. This part,” he pointed high, “says
that Michael created a place of torment and fire. He called it Hell and threw
Lucifer into it. It’s there that Lucifer dwells, trapped within a realm of fire
and brimstone for eternity.”
Dani marveled at the wall. She shook her head. “So all of that
Sunday school stuff—the Devil and demons and angels—all of it’s true?” He shrugged, nodding. “Mostly. Think of religions like the coloring
books of the actual story. How accurate your particular coloring book is
leaves a wide margin of error.”
“And demons? They come from Hell? Are they Lucifer’s?” “I’ve heard people say yes. They say Lucifer created them to torment
humanity because we’re God’s chosen. Others think that the angels’ war was so terrible that it sprung demonkind into existence from all the bloodshed
and death.”
“What do you think?”
“Me? I think they’re monsters. It doesn’t matter where they come
from, but,” he shrugged, glancing up at the wall, “if I had to guess I would
say they come from us.”
“Us?”
“Before I joined the Numen, people used the word ‘demon’ as a
metaphor for the worst parts of ourselves; our personal demons. I think
that’s closer to the truth than anything else. Demons are manifestations
created to be our worst fears and desires.” He shrugged. “But I could be
wrong.”
Our worst fears and desires manifested into reality. Dani thought
about the wraiths. It didn’t seem far off.
“So what does the rest of it tell us?” she asked, indicating the wall.
“What happened to the angels?”
“That’s the part of the text that’s most unclear. The angels wrote in a
language that’s never been fully spoken. We only know parts from what
we’ve been able to gather.”
“So you know some of it?”
“We know this: it speaks of God’s anger. We’re unsure of who He
was angry with, but we do know He brought down some kind of
punishment. And then,” he stepped over, pointing, “they left.” “Left?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, this doesn’t have all the answers. It says
the angels left Earth, or left our reality, or something like that. Whatever it
means, they disappeared. And before they left, they sang one last song.” “Song?”
“I told you: the angels sang. It was like their…I don’t know…way of
interacting with the world. Before they departed, they gathered together
and sang. And that,” he pointed, “is supposedly what made this. This entire
story is identical to walls in the other six celestial cities. It appears in every
single one. They called this record of the war the Song of Sacrifice. The
angels sang a song of mourning over those they killed in their war. All of
Creation wept. The inscription says this is how the emotion of grief was
created. And inscribed here,” he pointed to rows of list-like glyphs, “are the
names of every angel who died. It counts the dead and stands as a
monument of remembrance. It’s why we built the Hypogeum around it. It is
our place of remembrance.”
“Then what happened?” she asked, trying to take it all in. “The
angels just disappeared?”
“We haven’t heard from them since. Not directly, anyway. Some
have reported sightings of them over the centuries. They make appearances
in people’s lives and stories, but there’s no proof they’re real. I’ve never seen
one and neither has anyone I know.”
“And they allowed humanity to cope with the fallout from their war?
Demons. Numen. We’re inheriting their crap?”
“They couldn’t deal with what they did. So that leaves it up to us.” Dani looked up at it one last time. She pointed to one section of wall,
a part that stood on its own, “And that?”
“Prophecies, myths, legends; stuff the Elder Council hasn’t shared
much about. I wouldn’t worry about that part much.” But that was all he
said about it. “So what do you think?”
She leaned against a large stone protruding at the edge of the
landing. She couldn’t understand it. When she looked up at the text, this
massive record they could barely understand, she shook her head. “This…this tells me almost nothing.”
“Welcome to our world. Not exactly what you were expecting?”
Ethan asked, leaning against the wall across from her. “You were expecting
“A little, yeah.”
“I felt the same way when I found out. The gifted and others think
our ancestors were some kind of angelic superheroes out to save the world;
dying to protect us by going down in flames of glory. In the end,” he look up
over his shoulder at the Song, “they were nothing more than cowards who
ran away.”
They were silent for a long time. Dani stared at the wall, as if
expecting to see something—anything—that might make Ethan’s story add
up. One angel became angry, fought his brothers and sisters, and effed up
Creation. And then those that survived were so shell-shocked they left
reality broken and infested with demons.
“It’s not exactly the story you tell all the little Numen boys before
bedtime.” She grumbled.
“Still want to be a Numen? Because this,” he thumbed over his
shoulder, “is what we call our great forefathers.”
“Do I have a choice?”
He shrugged once, noncommittally. “Who’s to say? You break all
kinds of rules we used to think were unbreakable.”
“Would you offer that to anyone else?”
“Would you be insulted if I said no?”
“A little.” But looking at it again, she asked herself: do I really want
this? So far she’d been accused of being a distraction to the entire male
population of Empyrean, a weak link and a threat. And that was just the
first day!
She sighed. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.”
“It’s going to be difficult for you here.”
“It’s going to be difficult anywhere. At least here, people aren’t
trying to eat me alive.”
The smallest of smiles tugged at the corners of Ethan’s mouth
.
“Well, that’s debatable. You’ve met the Elders.”
“Do you think I should stay?”
“Do you care what I think?”
The question surprised her. Of course, ‘no’ was the obvious answer,
but as she looked at him she sensed something much different about him;
more so than the others. Jeduthun was kind, but pragmatic. Kleos stood up
for her but who knew why? Most of her fellow Novices either hated her,
didn’t want to be associated with her, or at best wanted to help her with no
way how. And then there was Mastema: a jerk.
But Ethan was different. He saved her life and brought her to
Empyrean. Now he confided in her. Could she rely on him? She didn’t know
yet.
She blushed. “I think I should head back. I imagine being out after
curfew is bad. Is there a curfew?”
“Not necessarily, but no Numen dared to question authority here
before.”
“Not one?”
“That surprises you?”
No, it didn’t.
Chapter Fifteen
The night was warm as Ethan walked her back. It was nice to have company. He had a very serious expression almost all the time; like resting brooding face. But he didn’t talk much about himself like most boys. In fact, most of his questions were about Dani.
“You never met your dad?” he asked.
“No.” she shook her head. “He left before I was born. It’s just been me and my mom all my life.”
“Left? He just left?”
“Yeah. My mom raised me. We moved around a lot. When I was younger, I didn’t notice that every time we moved to a new place, it was smaller than the one before. We were in an apartment when I was thirteen and lost that place last year when we couldn’t pay. Then we moved in with Ricky. And after that…well, I’m here.” She sighed and shook her head. “I never really thought much about my dad. Mom never talked about him. To tell the truth, I assumed I was mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“She always acted as if I wasn’t planned. If I did have another parent, I’m not sure he planned on being a father. But I’m just guessing.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged, hugging herself. “It wasn’t all bad. I have this necklace—well, used to have this necklace—that mom gave me. Real simple. Nothing special. She gave it to me when I was young. It sort of represented who she was before everything went downhill. I used to wear it all the time like I hoped she’d get better.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. She didn’t. I had to leave it. It’s gone.”