Infernal

Richard smelled salt and felt water at his back; a tremendous pressure that threatened to engulf and overwhelm him. He arched his back against the weight, felt his powerful wings—wings?—extend even further against the tide, blocking its course. He pushed backwards, straining with his legs, parting the waters.

“Yes!” Uriel cried, a grin on her face.

She stood opposite him, looking nothing like the girl child who’d thrust herself into his arms moments ago. She was taller, as broad of chest and muscled as he. Thick black hair twisted in a plait bound with silver and gold lashing. Gone was the tartan skirt and blouse; in their place was a brocaded robe and bronze cuirass. A xiphos, or similar single-hand sword hung from a baldric beneath her left arm. Two immense wings were thrust out to either side, impossibly long and powerful, likewise holding back a sea of water.

Richard looked down, confirming that he wore similar garb, then out across the channel he and Uriel had parted.

The chasm was filled with people. From Richard’s perspective, they looked no bigger than ants. Wearing tattered robes and carrying few possessions, most appeared to be the brink of exhaustion. They took no notice of the massive pair dividing the waters for them—can they not see us?—crossing the seabed with great haste, pursued from the far banks by an army of men in linen loincloths carrying leather shields and nasty looking spears. Others rode in horse drawn chariots.

As the ragtag band of refugees cleared the seabed, Gabriel swooped down from above, his massive wings churning the air with such force that sand and mud flew from the seafloor, clogging the wheels of the chariots and bringing the army to a halt in the center of the channel.

“Now, Michael!” Uriel cried. Without hesitation Richard withdrew his wings and took to the air, stranding the Egyptian army in the middle of the Red Sea where they were crushed to death or drowned by the enormous pressure of the resurging waters.

“Oh my God!” Richard cried as he stumbled backwards into the wall, the unexpected weight of the girl in his arms and the awe-inspiring vision he’d just had conspiring to send him to the floor as he snapped back to the present.

His head spun. He could still feel immeasurable power thrumming through his body, still felt and smelled the sea. Still felt the glorious sensation of wind beneath powerful wings.

“Eons ago,” Stephen Bana told him, “humans could not hope to understand or speak our true names, so they gave us names of their own. You they named Michael; myself Gabriel, and Eliana here,” he pointed to the girl child now standing before Richard, a knowing grin on her face, “Uriel.”

“You knew that would happen,” Richard said, gaining his footing as the residual sensations of the vision faded.

“I thought it might,” Eliana said, clasping her hands demurely in front of her chest. “When I first met Gabriel…Stephen…I had a similar experience.”

“Wait,” Richard said. He still didn’t trust his legs. He moved to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. Eliana moved to his side and sat there but did not touch him. “I thought you were severely autistic and incapable of communicating with others.”

“She is, on any other earth.” Stephen settled in to the lone chair in the room. “The same properties that keep this world’s inhabitants in a perpetual state of young adulthood have corrected the alteration in nerve cell to synapse connections in her brain. Here, she thinks and communicates as any other child would. It’s the reason her mother stayed as long as she did. Imagine her joy at being able to interact with her child, at long last. Were it not for the gravity of the situation, she’d have been quite content to remain here forever.”

“I’d say she communicates a damn sight better than other children,” Richard said, then cast the pair an accusing glance. “You might have warned me.”

“There is no time for such pleasantries,” Stephen said, unapologetic. “Your companion will be waking shortly, if she hasn’t already done so, and will be wondering where you are.”

Richard thought that was an understatement, then realized he hadn’t spared a thought for Sophia since he’d left her sleeping in the loft of a barn on another Earth. He had no idea how he was going to explain all of this to her.

“Damn,” Richard said. “If she wakes up and I’m not there, goes Ripping off trying to find me…” He trailed off. There was no way she could hope to find him in an infinite Multi-verse with the random nature of the Rips. It was far more likely that BanaTech would find her first.

“She’ll be fine for a while yet,” Eliana said. “Eralah is keeping watch over her.”

“You know about Sophia?” Richard asked. He had not given any thought to what Eliana might think about her mother’s Mirror. Or what had happened to the first Sophia Bledell.

“I know she isn’t my mother,” Eliana answered, her eyes filling with tears. “My mother is dead.”

Heedless of the consequence of their last contact, Richard gathered the child into his arms and hugged her. He said nothing. There were no words he could think of that would comfort her. Key or not, Keeper or not, Eliana was still a child, and children hurt most when those they love are taken from them. She cried on his shoulder for a while and then pulled away.

“Stephen is right,” she said, wiping tears from her cheeks and smiling a brave smile. “There is little time and you still have much to learn. We need to end this. Now. And that starts with you knowing everything we do.”

To Stephen, Eliana said: “Will it work?”

“It worked for us,” Stephen responded. He stretched out his hands to both her and Richard.

Eliana took Stephen’s proffered hand and one of Richard’s in her own, and then looked at Richard expectantly. Richard eyed Stephen’s hand quizzically.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“Within circles lie knowledge,” Stephen said cryptically. “You’ll want to hold on. It may be a bit of a bumpy ride.”

Richard took a deep breath. What the hell, he thought. Sometimes the only way out is to go further in.

He grasped Stephen’s hand and the world vanished around him.

If asked to describe it, Richard would have said it felt like having a hook thrust into the center of his chest and being pulled forwards at the speed of light. There was a moment of sensation like being dragged along a dark tunnel, then light of such intensity as to burn the optic nerves to ash burst before him, rushed around and through him as water streaks through a sieve.

It’s like the light in Rips, he thought, but a thousand times more intense.

Then the sensation of motion stopped and he looked about in wonder. They were in a vast chamber filled with light and colors so vibrant they seemed to be alive. If the light they’d passed through—that had passed through them—to get here had been a thousand times brighter than that in the Rips, then this was a million times more so. Beauty and passion flourished in that light. And love. Love so powerful it made the heart ache and want to sing simultaneously.

Uriel was to his left, powerful and strong, restored to the beauty from his vision. Gabriel was on his right. There was no similarity to the aged and thin Stephen Bana. This magnificent creature had a mane of golden hair that cascaded down his shoulders like water caressing rock above a fall. Richard shook his own head and felt hair as fine as silk stroke his shoulders above a cuirass of fine gold. He flexed muscles in his back he hadn’t had before, felt the magnificent beat of air beneath wings again and rose above the others. He took two turns around the boundless space they occupied, ending with a barrel roll, delighting in the sensation of air rushing past his body. He laughed out loud and what came out startled him with its booming intensity.

He returned to Gabriel and Uriel’s side, grinning what felt to be a broad and spectacular grin.

“He remembers that well enough,” Uriel said, smiling.

“You’ve always been a show-off, brother,” Gabriel said with a smile.

Except it isn’t a smile, Richard thought. Because we don’t have faces, or bodies, or even wings. Not in the sense humans think of them, anyway. Human eyes would burst into flame at the sight of us, their eardrums would shatter explosively, their very brains igniting into fiery ash. We are beings of pure energy. Not as powerful as the All to be sure, or even what they call The Source. But energy nonetheless. And to see us as we truly are would destroy them in an instant.

“That’s correct, brother,” Uriel told him.

Why, Richard thought, Uriel is not even a female. Nor is she male. None of us are. Our human forms may have gender, but we ourselves do not. We do not die, we are not reborn, rather we reincarnate spontaneously. We simply go on and on for all eternity, having no need of the messy ritual humans call reproduction.

“Again you are correct,” Gabriel said.

“Where are we?” Richard asked, and was startled by the sound of his voice.

It was not words that came out, not words that a human ear would have recognized anyway. What came out was more like singing; a sound of such complex melodious and harmonious transitions that no choir of human voices could ever hope to imitate it.

“Nowhere,” Uriel replied in that sing-song voice. “And everywhere.”

“I don’t understand,” Richard said.

“The realm the Multi-verse exists within is but a circle,” Gabriel explained. “And each universe exists within that circle, completing a circle of its own, just as galaxies and solar systems are circles existing within those circles. As we joined our separate consciousnesses, we became a circle. In this circle we may share our thoughts and memories unencumbered by the weight of human emotion and physical frailty we have endured for so long.”

“Where are our bodies?” Richard asked.

“Right where we left them,” Uriel answered. “We shed them in that time and place as they cannot exist in this one. Where we exist now, there is no time. No place. We are in the Elsewhere. Here we are as we were, our true selves. No human form could ever hope to survive here.”

“Why are we here?” Richard asked.

“So that you may learn, brother,” Gabriel said. “Learn, and remember.”

Listen, brother:

Eons ago, long before the creation of this realm and before time itself existed, the ALL formed us from Its light. To act as Its companions and to serve. To rejoice at our very existence.

This we did without hesitation. We knew no other way. At that time, before humans existed, we knew only the radiance and peace bestowed upon us by the ALL and the glory of service to our Almighty Creator.

Then the ALL created humankind, bestowing upon them a gift It had granted no other; a part of Itself the humans have come to call a soul. This gift holds great power for them, though they little know how to use it. It comes with the power of choice. The choice to serve the ALL or refuse It. The choice to accept Its light or reject it. The choice to live their lives as they see fit, to be damned for eternity or, upon the expiration of their human forms, become one with the light. One with The Source. One with the ALL.

It also comes with a cost. They are lowly creatures, weak and frail. They cannot, in human form, exist outside the confines of their Earth or the constructs they create with their incredible imaginations. Their imaginations are another gift as well. They themselves are creators. They’ve created marvelous cities around the globe, modified their personal habitats to suit their needs, adapted plants, animals, and even themselves on a genetic level so that they enjoy better foods and live longer lives through the science they call medicine. They’ve even, some of them, left the confines of their worlds and traveled out among the stars.

As we were but servants to the ALL, fated to be reborn again and again in this form and thus denied these gifts as well as union with our Creator, an emotion none had felt before began to ripple throughout our ranks: Jealousy.

Jealousy quickly becomes anger. Anger becomes hatred. And hatred begets violence.

As a whole we struggled with these dark emotions. We were born of the light and had never known darkness. Never felt its cold touch or empty embrace. It was alien to us; foreign. The birth of evil among our kind. The strongest among us overcame it, suppressed our anger and defeated our hatred. Others, the Infernal, were unable to resist its allure. They seized choice for themselves and rebelled against the ALL.

You know of the war that followed and our subsequent banishment. Know of the treachery of the Infernal and their continued efforts to debase and ultimately destroy humankind. These acts caused humanity to turn their backs on the ALL and fall upon each other with acts of greed, odium, and murder, condemning them to lives of hardship, grief, and struggle.

What you do not know is the cost.

When the ALL abandoned this realm, casting us down into human form so that we would know the burden of their existence, share in their frailties and likewise suffer their dark emotions, it also severed Itself from The Source. Humans retained their earthly gifts, their knowledge and ability to expand on whatever they can conceive of, but lost their ability to become one with the ALL. When they die, as they must, their souls do not join with The Creator as some of them believe. Rather, they ascend to another plain, a circle if you will, where they have been waiting for centuries, lost and alone. They have no form, no thought or consciousness. They are but energy and light; power, awaiting a union with the ALL that may never come.

And they are vulnerable.

While we, the Keepers of the ALL, were cast down into human form, the Infernal were hurled into the very darkness they had so willingly embraced. They were discorporated, denied any form save that of shadow. They can manipulate and meddle with the human psyche, can even occupy their forms for short periods of time, but they cannot act directly. Cannot cause injury or kill, nor influence physical objects. They are but apparitions. Mere thought without substance.

What’s more, as insubstantial entities, they cannot travel through the Rips; cannot form a circle as we have done here. They cannot leave the various Earths they were cast down upon and join together with the rest of their brothers; neither for communion with one another, nor to further their insidious goals.

Whether or not this was the intent of the ALL is unclear. What is clear is that they’ve found a champion among the very humans they despise. A man with the power and authority to direct their resources into building a device that, once completed, will draw all Earths together. Cause every Rip to converge, thus freeing them to join together. And, as the Multi-verse becomes one, with each Earth flowing into the other assuring the destruction of all of them, so too will all circles become one. The Infernal will gain access to the souls of humanity. They will corrupt that power and mold it into darkness, use it to reshape the multi-verse in their image. Light and love will be obliterated, all good things snuffed out. The Multi-verse will be reshaped into a living hell for the very souls used to create it.

Once begun, there is little we can do to stop it. We too would be at the mercy of the Infernal for all of eternity.

But there is hope.

The Infernal have deceived their champion into believing that he is acting in his own interests. That the machine he is building will gain him absolute power over all that exists in the Multi-verse. He is ignorant of their plan and naïve to the true consequences the Focal Point Generator will bring about. To keep him oblivious to their scheme and ensure his continued cooperation, they have used misinformation and half-truths, as is their method. He is unaware of our true nature and believes our existence to be no more than an aberration. A fluke of evolution.

He does not fear us. Therefore, he underestimates us.

He requires The Key to unlock his machine, believing it’s the unique chemical defect in the child’s brain and not who she truly is that will trigger the device. The truth is quite the opposite. Any Keeper can learn to will a Rip into existence, manipulating both its ingress and terminus. All that is required is that we accept what we are. That and a little practice.

Now listen closely brother because our time in this circle is now very short. We cannot be gone long from our physical bodies else they will perish. We will be reborn and what you have learned here will be lost. As it is we will lose much because the human mind was never meant to contain this knowledge.

Eliana, the girl child, must be destroyed. The Infernal will not stop seeking her until BanaTech has her back in its grasp. Once removed from the sanctuary Earth her mind will again become unbalanced and she will not be able to control her ability to form a Rip once stimulated by the machine. This Rip combined with the energies of The Source will cause the convergence of the Multi-verse and all will be lost.

Once destroyed, Uriel will be reborn into another human body and balance will be restored.

There is no other choice.