Fall of Lucifer (15 page)

Jether watched, trembling and grief-stricken, as Lucifer lifted his harrowed face to man and then straight to Yehovah’s throne, his eyes glittering black and hard – haughty, rebellious, filled with loathing.

Gasps of surprise and horror rippled throughout the chamber. Michael stared in horror at the defiant Lucifer. But it was as he surveyed the chamber that his blood ran cold.

One by one, silently and deliberately, thousands of Lucifer’s generals, warrior angels from all across the chamber, rose from their knees and stood, their arms crossed, their heads held high in defiance, following their renegade king.

Then thousands of the Luciferean Guard rose to their feet from all across the chamber. Then tens of thousands. Until a full third of the angelic host was standing.

Michael turned to Zadkiel, who was kneeling just behind Lucifer. His head was bowed, but his breathing was shallow.

Slowly he lifted his gaze to meet Michael’s. ‘Damned for eternity,’ he said in a hoarse voice. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

Michael stared with unbelief into Zadkiel’s eyes.

Zadkiel quickly turned his face away, burning with shame. ‘I have sworn my allegiance. I cannot break my vow.’ He tore the seal of the Holy Watchers, his princely insignia, from his bodice with shaking hands and rose to his feet. A full third of the Holy Watchers rose after him.

Lucifer met Michael’s gaze and smiled vindictively.

Gabriel beheld the scene in horror. Michael laid his hand on his arm and looked towards the Ancient Ones. Jether had fallen prostrate, praying. The other Ancient Ones lay likewise before their thrones – with the exception of Charsoc. He exchanged a long, meaningful glance with Lucifer, then stood. Gasps of horror rippled throughout the chamber.

An uncharacteristic malice played on Charsoc’s face as he stared down at Jether, who would not look up from his prayers.

Lucifer cast his eye slowly over the assembly. A full third of the angelic host was standing. He smiled in triumph.

The treason was complete.

Michael, still kneeling, stared up at him, his hand on his sword. Fierce.

‘You’ll never succeed, Lucifer.’

Lucifer laughed derisively. ‘Ah, but you see, my dear naïve Michael . . . ’ He swept his sword across the scene. ‘I already have. One-third of heaven’s armies are at my command, dear brother.’ Lucifer smiled calculatingly at Gabriel. ‘And with Gabriel by my side, we will rule them all.’

Lucifer grasped Gabriel’s shoulder and pressed his mouth to his ear. ‘For over a million aeons I have followed blindly. For over a million aeons I suspended my own judgments and trusted
His
without question. For over a million aeons I have subjugated my own reason to His.’ The fervid fire in Lucifer’s eyes burned brighter. ‘And
now
I must protect Him from His own creation. Heed your dreams, Gabriel! Save your soul – and save Yehovah. We were fools! Gullible, self-deluded, blind minions. But no longer!’

Gabriel stared in turmoil from Michael to Lucifer.

Lucifer turned to the standing angelic host and raised the gleaming broadsword high above his head. ‘I declare war in the heavenlies!’

With a deft movement, he thrust his gleaming broadsword savagely at Michael. Michael, still kneeling, deflected his thrust and nimbly rose to his feet. They circled each other, alert, vigilant – supreme masters of swordsmanship, equally matched in strength and warriorship.

Belzoc, one of Lucifer’s generals, grasped Michael’s throat from behind in a stranglehold. Lucifer laughed dryly and aimed his broadsword directly at Michael’s chest.

Michael twisted Belzoc’s arm and struggled free, kicking Lucifer with the full force of his immense strength, elevating him a full twenty feet into the air. Lucifer smashed face down onto the solid crystal floor. He rose, dazed, blood running from his mouth, irate now. He was immediately surrounded by ten of Michael’s élite warriors.

A distant shofar sounded. In response, a bloodthirsty roar erupted from Lucifer’s third of the angelic host. Thousands of armoured warriors on horseback, armed with iron crossbows, surged down from the southern cliffs of the mount upon the angelic host, descending with ferocity on Yehovah’s angelic battalions, leaving a bloody tide of hatred and malevolence in their wake.

Jether looked up from his prayers, his hand covering his mouth in consternation.

Lucifer raised his broadsword high in his left hand, simultaneously drawing the Sword of State from its sheath with his right. He lunged viciously at Michael, who thrust back with the glinting Sword of Justice. The violent clash of steel against steel was drowned by the savage roaring of Lucifer’s battalions. The two brothers fought, thrust for thrust, steel clanging against steel, their violent skirmish unrelenting.

Then, like lightning, Lucifer thrust towards Michael’s heart with the Sword of State. Simultaneously he brought the flat of the broadsword down violently on Michael’s chest, winding him.

Michael staggered to his knees. He raised his face to see Lucifer over him, triumphant and cruel, his wings hovering two feet off the ground.

Lucifer lifted his broadsword, his eyes glinting fiendishly.

Gabriel stood on the far side of the chamber, paralysed by the bloody fighting all around him. He stared in horror at Lucifer.

‘Brothers for eternity!’ screamed Lucifer, as sweat poured off him. ‘Brothers!’ An evil smile played on his lips as he lifted the razor sharp broadsword straight above Michael’s neck.

An immense thunder roared from the direction of the throne – light upon light, sound upon sound. Suddenly Lucifer was lifted thirty feet off the ground by an invisible force and hurled like a stone onto the glass floor of the mount, a full league down the nave.

Waves of blinding radiance pulsated from the great white throne, illuminating the entire chamber, bathing the wounded angels. Within moments they recovered, rising to their feet, their heads bowed.

Lucifer struggled to his knees. He was now before the throne of the Most High. The four living creatures stood at the throne, their blazing swords held ready. Lucifer surveyed the throne room as if disoriented. A deathly hush descended.

‘Let him pass.’ Yehovah’s voice was as the roar of a thousand waters.

Immediately the cherubim with the flaming swords moved aside.

Lucifer rose to his feet, recovering rapidly. He walked straight past the cherubim, his eyes glinting with rebellion and arrogance, and strode towards the throne. Ten thousand of his generals and guards arrived and followed closely behind, their heads held high in defiance.

A second wave of intense, shimmering radiance cascaded down towards the mutinous angelic force. Lucifer sheltered his face from the searing light with his forearm as he doggedly continued his stride through the radiating prisms of white fire towards the throne. His fist tightened around the Sword of State.

A third wave broke over Lucifer’s battalion. The Luciferean Guard stood transfixed. Halfway to the throne, Moloch, another of Lucifer’s generals, uttered a strangled cry. He grasped his throat, suffocating in the white fire. Bloodcurdling screams echoed across the entire assembly as the bodies of thousands of dread warriors collapsed to the floor like ninepins. The hundred thousand warriors close behind Lucifer’s generals gasped desperately for breath, their weapons strewn over the chamber, literally burning alive in the white inferno.

Jether stared across to Charsoc, aghast. The treacherous elder’s face was contorted with an agony so dire that his screams were noiseless as he tried desperately to hide his face from the searing light.

Michael and Gabriel approached, followed by their angelic legions, then lay prostrate on the floor.

‘
Bow
, Lucifer!’ Michael shouted. ‘Don’t be a stubborn fool. Just
bow!
’

Lucifer swayed unsteadily as the rasping screams reverberated all across the chamber.

Zadkiel stood behind Lucifer, horrified as the pulsating conflagration engulfed him. Shaking uncontrollably, he reeled to the floor like a stone.

Lucifer, gasping for air, filled with terror and rage, put one foot feebly in front of the other. He was immediately flung back with staggering force onto the hard sapphire floor, immobilized. The white, scorching inferno settled, shimmering, in the centre of the throne room, directly over where Lucifer lay paralysed.

Slowly Michael lifted his head, surveying the carnage in the throne room. He turned to Gabriel, who knelt beside him, trembling. A tear ran down Gabriel’s cheek. Michael placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder to steady him, then took a deep breath and rose to his feet, his hand on the hilt of his broadsword.

He raised his face to where the Ancient Ones – twenty-four minus Charsoc – sat enthroned, praying. Jether and Michael exchanged a long look, then Jether nodded almost imperceptibly. Michael closed his eyes and bowed his head, his breathing laboured.

He motioned to his fellow archangels, Raphael and Uriel. Raphael walked to the stunned Lucifer and forced him to his feet. Uriel, his eyes cast to the floor, locked heavy silver irons around Lucifer’s ankles.

His senses reeling, Michael slowly walked over to where Lucifer stood. His brother was ashen-faced, his hands hanging before him in the heavy silver shackles. Trembling, Lucifer turned his face away from Michael’s gaze, his tormented blue eyes staring at the glistening sapphire floor. Michael knelt to pick up Lucifer’s Sword of State, which was lying discarded on the chamber floor.

Michael clasped Lucifer’s right arm.

‘Michael . . . ’ Lucifer whispered.

Marshalling every vestige of his training, desperately attempting to still the indescribable agony that seared through the core of his being, Michael forced Lucifer down the nave towards the great white throne.

As Lucifer neared the throne, his expression changed from rebellion and rage to anguish and foreboding, and then from foreboding to terror. Desperately he tried to shield his eyes from the force and purity of the light, but his arms were manacled. Finally, he arrived in front of the throne, his head bowed, his sapphire eyes closed.

Michael bowed his head in distress, unable to watch. There was complete silence.

Ever so slowly, Lucifer lifted his head, his eyes filled with rage and sorrow. ‘Holy Father,’ he uttered in a hoarse whisper.

The light pulsated, and there was an immense thunder. Then a glorious imperial figure, almost indefinable in the immense light radiating from Him, walked majestically through the white fires, out of Yehovah. The mists started to fade as the breathtaking form became visible.

Lucifer gasped. ‘Christos!’

The King spoke in a voice filled with unimaginable empathy. ‘We grieve for you.’

Raw pain contorted Lucifer’s features. ‘But why man?’ he uttered almost inaudibly. A racking sob escaped him. ‘Were we not enough?’ He stared at Christos helplessly, haggard, wretched with grief. ‘Was
I
not enough for Him?’ A solitary tear ran down his cheek.

Christos looked upon him with infinite tenderness, infinite pity. He brushed the tear away gently from Lucifer’s cheek. His touch lingered. ‘We would that you would repent.’

Lucifer stared, trembling, his gaze locked fiercely on the sorrowful eyes of the King. ‘Tell Him . . . ’ His voice shook with emotion. ‘Tell Him . . . I cannot.’

The Christ drew a sharp breath as though He were in intense pain . . . intense suffering. His eyelids slowly closed. Heaven waited. Then His voice merged with that of Yehovah. One but three. Three but one. A sublime voice like the voice of thousands of thundering waters – magnetic, saturated with compassion and intense sorrow.

‘LUCIFER!’

Christos stepped back and nodded almost imperceptibly to Raphael. Raphael raised his sword and with one swift movement of the sharp blade swept Lucifer’s military medals and insignia to the floor.

With tears streaming down his face, Michael unclasped the seal of the Royal House of Yehovah from Lucifer’s breast. Lucifer’s mouth moved soundlessly in agony.

Then Christos spoke.
‘Oh, how thou art fallen, Lucifer, son of the morning!’

Lucifer began to weep wretchedly.

Instantly Christos’ glorious form vanished, consumed once more into the centre of the iridescent white throne.

Jether, chief of the ancient elders, moved in front of Lucifer, his countenance filled with a dreadful sorrow. He raised his sceptre above Lucifer’s gleaming raven hair. ‘Lucifer, seraph, chief prince, holy angelic regent of the Royal House of Yehovah, light-bearer – you are banished from Yehovah’s presence and exiled to outer darkness, through all eternity of eternities, to await the judgment and the lake of fire.’

Instantly the throne room and all of Yehovah’s angelic host disappeared. Lucifer and the fallen angels were left in the empty chamber, engulfed by total blackness and silence. A distant rumbling started, then rose to an immense thunder. The tempest built with the force of a cyclone, and a torrid inferno rose out of the blackness, illuminating the entire panorama.

Lucifer lifted his forearm from his face, his mouth opening and closing mindlessly in terror as an all-consuming apocalyptic sheet of flame descended onto his angels, the scorching, incinerating flames engulfing them. ‘The consuming fire!’ he shrieked.