Aestrangel the Chosen, page 19
“Aestra, are you okay?” Camael says after a few moments.
“It was you who put me in this room, wasn’t it?”
He doesn’t respond. He shines his white light in my direction.
“Wasn’t it?” I demand.
“You remember?” he asks.
I lower my head in a deep nod. “Everything.”
His wings extend at his sides. They pulse with a deep, navy-blue color, and I know he’s trying to offer me some sort of angelic explanation. “Aestra, it was the only way,” he says extending his hands in surrender. “I suggested you be sent to The Observatory after your indiscretion with the boy only because the alternative the other Powers had offered was your banishment. It was for your own good. I couldn’t let them expel you.” His voice is sad, and a part of me almost feels sorry for him.
Almost…
“So, you left me here to rot?”
“No! Never!” he cries. “That was never the intent! I had hoped you would learn from the humans and pass that wisdom on to the other angels who were headed on their Callings. You just got…” his voice trails.
“Distracted? Preoccupied? What? Did you not think I was going to watch the man I loved? I studied every move of his entire life!”
Camael sighs heavily. “You squandered your time, Aestra.”
I remember the words of the Lord when I came face-to-face with him: Child, you have squandered your time spent in The Observatory, he had said right before I looked upon his demonic face, right before he told me Jake would not be granted entrance into Ilarium as an Ishim. Rage swells inside me, rising from the pit of my stomach with an acidic feeling. Hot, poisonous anger begins to work its way into the very marrow of my astral soul, and without even thinking about it, my wings crack open at my sides and hum with a delicate gray aura. A pounding pressure works its way against my temples and to the center of my forehead. Camael is clearly taken off guard by this, as he takes a swift step sideways.
“That’s exactly what he said to me. I squandered my time. But I observed. I watched. I witnessed. And for Jake to have been denied Ishim was a farce!” My voice roars, echoing off The Observatory walls. “Of all the wretched people who have passed through the Halls, Jake was one of the better ones! He should have been exalted in the holy light of the father for all of eternity!” With my last breath, a torrent of violent wind rushes through the room, causing Camael to stumble backward an inch.
He rights himself and steps forward, as if to calm me down. “Aestra, I…”
“I needed you,” I plead. “Jake was a good man, and he was … gone. Lights out! Why didn’t you help me then? That’s when I needed you the most, Camael!” Tears of sadness and anger spring in the corners of my eyes. It stings my essence like something vile and toxic as it descends my cheek. Angels aren’t supposed to cry.
“We all decided, Aestra. All The Powers. We felt it was in your best interest to absorb his soul into the Heavenly Breath. We gave our recommendation to the Creator, and He made His final decision.”
My feathers tremble, and I take a slow, deep breath. I rotate my shoulders forward to try to calm the quivering, but that doesn’t help. Fury takes hold of my body, and I’m not sure how much longer I can control the pressure of…
“You did this to Jake? You denied him Ishim? You played a part in all of this?” I ask. But I know the answer already.
He nods, regretfully. “Yes. That’s why there is forgiveness needed on both sides. I would have never intentionally hurt you. You are my star. My Aestra. You are so special to me, like a daughter. You are unlike any other angel.”
I’ve heard enough. A thin, red veil drips over my eyes, clouding my vision, as pure wrath bursts in my chest. Like a weed infecting the deep brown earth, its tentacles writhe their way through every inch of me, taking root in every aspect of my being. An electric shock jolts me from within, petrifying my once vibrant white quills and charring my feathers to a burnt black. The smell of burning flesh permeates the air, and Camael chokes from the scent. It smells like the night I died.
I close my eyes. “You’re a failure yourself, Camael,” I say sharply, but the sound of my voice is nearly unrecognizable. I speak with the voice of my inner self—a mechanical timbre of metal blades scraping against each other. “What right do you have to pass judgment on me when you couldn’t even succeed in your own Calling?”
I envision Lilith and Samael tangled in a loving embrace in the cave beside the ocean while a forlorn Camael watches them from a distance in despair. With my astral hands, I take the vision, crumble it into a black ball and throw it in Camael’s direction. He staggers backward as the image enters his astral mind. He gasps and tries to protest, but he is left speechless by the ancient memories.
Yes. I am unlike any other angel in the Creator’s astral bloodline because not only have I been infected with humanity, but I have tasted darkness in its purest form. I think of Malek and his deep honey-wine kisses. He gave this to me. He gave me the strength to understand. To see. To become. To transcend.
Camael is upright and steady again, still trying to coax me. Still trying to calm me. But he can’t. I am too far gone to be stopped. And to be honest, I don’t want to be stopped.
I stretch my fingers out and will them to elongate. They extend to twice their original length, and in place of fingernails, I desire pointed, metal claws. I can’t help but laugh as my shape bends to my command.
I sideswipe my long index finger, and Camael goes smashing into the wall, right underneath the Window. His astral form crashes hard against the stone, and the tapestry of the Window rattles against its fasteners. A small crack in the glass spiders up from the bottom-left corner to the center of the Window making the images of the human world appear warped and jagged. But isn’t that how they really are? With their imperfections, and disgraceful intentions, and their ugliness, and their temptations. Maybe now the angels will see the people for what they really are—twisted reflections of their own astral essences.
Camael starts to scream as I approach him. I bring my hands in front of me and flick each of my metal-bladed fingers in succession. “Do you know how it feels to have everything you love taken away from you?”
With each movement of my blades and without even touching him, Camael’s quills are viciously cut from his back, and I smile as his white feathers litter the cavern floor. “Aestra, I…” he begs frantically in pain and in terror. There’s no fighting back for Camael. It’s not in his astral gene to do harm to anyone. He will beg and plead, but he will not retaliate against me.
The room starts to rumble and shake, and the door to The Observatory opens wide bringing in a gale of wind from the Temple. The wind begins to swirl next to the energy source and a rushing vortex opens in the floor. Objects from the chamber become unhinged from their resting places and are sucked into the chasm. I lose my footing for a second but move closer to Camael so I’m out of the quagmire’s pull.
“Do you know what it’s like to have everyone you’ve ever loved and trusted turn their backs on you?” I say as I claw my hands up and down in the air in front of me. As I do this, Camael’s human shape begins to flicker in and out with his white light. What was once his face is now shredded gaps of light, like torn-up pieces of paper.
The mouth of the vortex grows, and it starts to pull me to it. It’s for me, and I know what it’s there for. I know it won’t be long before I am sucked into the pit of Hell. But I am not yet finished.
I still see red. The red veil. The madness. The rage.
The retribution.
I kneel in front of Camael—his mangled, weakened body. I grab his shoulders and dig my claws deep into his being. “Do you know what it’s like to watch the ones you love die?”
“Oh, Aestra,” he sighs weakly, apologetically.
I press down harder, my hands entering his chest, and reaching into his astral heart. “Do you know what it’s like to die?”
“Aestra! No! Please! Stop!” he cries as I ram my talons into the inner workings of his body. His white light violently flashes before sputtering out. In the distance, I hear angels wailing and screaming for the Lord to offer some assistance to the unseen massacre in The Observatory. While they don’t know what has transpired, they can sense there is a dangerous presence looming in the shadows. One that Ilarium has not felt for an awfully long time.
He never does intervene though.
I remove my arms from Camael’s distorted and lifeless angel shape.
But the vortex is waiting for me.
And I am ready.
So, I take a step back and allow myself to freefall down its throat.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Chosen
I’ve known pain and agony on many diverse levels, and to this, I am no stranger. I fall again, down the rabbit hole, down the spiraling abyss of nothingness and eternity. I fell once before, long ago, and I had been scared because the further I fell, the less I felt the presence of the Creator. That pain had struck me so deeply, and I almost wasn’t able to continue my existence. I had allowed my rage and anger and hatred to consume me completely, and it had physically hurt to be cast out.
And now? I have destroyed holy life, snuffed out the glorious white light of my mentor and left the torn-up shards of his wasted essence on the sacred Observatory floor.
For these sins, I fall, yet I feel no remorse. I feel no guilt for what I have done. The Creator has washed his hands of me and has flushed me down his astral toilet.
And I feel no pain.
In fact, there is a calming sensation that works its way into me—even though I careen wildly in a spiral motion, even though my essence is being torn apart at the seams and reassembled into grotesque puzzle pieces. What was once eyes are now deep, hollowed-out slats. What once was a torso is now a mass of tentacles that wraps its arms around itself. I grow, I shift, and I change.
I become corporeal for a split second, and then the gravity force rips that body to shreds and I am formed into something different. Then the process starts all over again. Something is trying to define me, figure me out, and create a casing for me to compartmentalize my soul, causing me to die a continuous, repeated death, like a radio transmission stuck on a loop. Sometimes I get the feeling it is trying to kill me for good, but it can’t. So, it must rethink how it will create me again. And every time, there is no pain, just strength, an increase in power, and an increase in ability.
I black out for a little bit, and when I come to, I am lying in a green field of purple flowers. I move each appendage of my body and try to figure out what has become of me—what shape did the Forces in the Abyss fashion for me to be in? But it’s me, the same as I was before—Aestra with arms and fingers and legs and toes and a human body. Human, but not, because I tingle all over, like being massaged in pine needles.
The flowers around me have glittery, jeweled buds and sing a harmonious song. I sit up and pluck one from the ground so I can further inspect it. It screams as I rip it from the root, cutting it off from its essential power source. The petals are soft and veiny, and they are perfectly identical in shape and size, but upon closer inspection, the glittering bud in the center is not a gem, but an eye that blinks and stares at me with a pained expression. I throw the flower to the ground in disgust and look over my shoulder. Smoky air billows in gray tufts behind me. The eerie purple flowers close their eyes and bend their stems in a uniformed curtsy.
Asphodel.
I’m back in Asphodel, and I can’t say that I am surprised because I had an inkling of a feeling I would end up back here in some capacity.
Something stirs in the smoke. The gray waves become distorted and jagged, and a great clashing and clanging sound echoes in the distance. Something is approaching—something heavy and large, like metal scales rubbing across the muscular back of a fairy tale dragon. But I know this isn’t something that is making its way toward me. Rather, it’s someone.
Malek.
Black, gnarled horns poke their way out of the gray fog, and as he lifts his head from behind the shadows, his demon visage is extinguished to the one that is so familiar to me—my brother. He approaches me, stepping on the purple flowers and crushing them into a path of broken stems and bloody eyes. I ignore their screams. I hear nothing but the rhythm of his monster breath quickening as he gets closer, and I rise to greet him.
“I was wondering when you would be back,” he says with a sly grin. I can’t help but smile back at him. He never fails to entrance me, and I am thankful he is here. In the past, I know I had tried extremely hard to deny him, but through it all, Malek Forcas has been my rock.
“How did you know?” I ask.
“I didn’t. I had a feeling you might. I get a sense our way of things is better suited for now.”
I clear my throat.
“I’ll go out on a limb and say you didn’t get the answers you were looking for,” he says.
“Camael lied to me, Malek. He lied!” I say, and there’s a bit of disbelief in my voice. “All of them turned their backs on me. They all betrayed me.” To say the words out loud is like saying them in a dream. It’s hard to reconcile the betrayal in my mind, considering my bond to Camael was so strong for so long. It still feels unreal.
Malek’s eyes soften to a light gray color. “Because they fear you, Aestrangel. They fear your power and glory. They fear what you are capable of.”
I throw my head up to the sky and breathe in. My long hair brushes against my folded wings and tumbles to the ground tickling the back of my ankles. There is no sun in Asphodel. Well, in my version of Asphodel, at least, because this is the place constructed by my own will and desires. Whatever is in your heart, whatever you want to see, or experience is directly at your disposal, Malek had told me the first time I’d ended up here, but at that time, my heart was shadowed with despair over Jake. I hadn’t been able to look past that or feel anything other than the heaviness of that loss. “What I am capable of,” I repeat under my breath and remember the time when I was able to create the vision orb in the palm of my hands. What if I had that same power and control right now?
I fan my wings out at my side and bring my arms together in front of me. Just what am I capable of? Just what is it they fear? I close my eyes and think of Ilarium with its beautiful landscape and glorious splendor. The sun and moon were always within our vision and…
A warm sensation radiates against my eyelids, and a bright light brings colorful speckles sailing across my closed vision. I flutter open my eyes and see I have brought the sun to Asphodel. My Asphodel. Without further hesitation, I lock my hands together and set myself on my heels. With one knee bent, I jump and shoot like a canon toward my manufactured sun. My wings crack back at an angle, and I am soaring like a bird through the sky, headed for the orange ball.
Not like a bird, though. As a bird.
My body morphs into a glittering red and gold feather phoenix racing across the horizon. I ignite into flames as I head closer and closer to the sun until I am fully engulfed in fire. I fly high, dip down, and dance in the Asphodel air—the legendary beast rising from the blazes of Hell. Free from the confines of not only time and space but also form and spirit.
I crash back to the ground in front of Malek and cover my body in my burning wings. The entire world shakes and trembles at my descent. As I rise, burnt feathers fall to a heap at my feet, and I transform back to my human-like self. Malek is awe-struck. His eyes are open wide and his mouth slightly slack-jawed.
I raise an eyebrow. “Like that?” I ask.
It takes him a second to get his words organized. “Yes,” he answers, breathing out. “I’d say definitely like that.”
“But I don’t belong here, Malek. I can feel it. Asphodel is not my place. Just like I felt it when I returned to Ilarium, it didn’t feel right. Asphodel cannot hold me if that makes any sense.”
“Yes,” he says. “I understand. You are much larger now than the limitations of Asphodel. We must go to him right away.”
“Lucifer?”
Malek huffs a little chuckle. “Who else?” And he outspreads his black wings. “We don’t have these for nothing, ya know. Come on.”
I imitate his actions, and he takes off ahead of me. I follow closely behind as he leads me flying across the fog world of Asphodel to a wide, rocky crater that descends deep below the surface of the world. We hover over the precipice of the depression as wind gusts bob us up and down. Malek points to the deepness of the cave and begins to slowly descend, and I nod and follow, gliding gracefully into the spiky mouth of the basin.
On my descent, the sounds of screams and moans fill the rocky cave. Wraiths screech past us every now and then, and when we arrive at the bottom, hordes of ghouls and distorted beasts swarm the opening of a tunnel.
“This is where my father lives. This is Gehenna,” Malek says as he lands swiftly next to me.
The monsters cry out in pain and agony. “What are they?” I ask.
“Souls of the damned. The throwaways. The leftovers.”
A feeling of shock comes over me. “Dead? Dead human souls?”
Malek nods.
I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s not possible. When a soul passes on they are either made an Ishim in Ilarium or are reabsorbed into the breath of the Creator. Human souls have no place in Gehenna, the Land of Punishment. Human souls aren’t to be damned, or punished, or…”
“Punished?” He turns his mouth up to question me. “Oh, no! Aestrangel! They’re not being punished! This is their pleasure! This is their paradise. They have taken on the shape and form of their deepest desires and will live for eternity in their own personal heaven. Do you really think your maker would reabsorb the souls of the truly wicked? Not so, Morning Glory. They are given up to Lucifer.”
