Angel of Death

SNIPPET PITCH: Angel Gabriel receives shocking news of Earth's cosmic uprising. He lapses into total recall, after a skyscraper-busting accident...

CHAPTER ONE

ANGEL OF DEATH!

CITY OF CRAHOS, GATAN (HEAVENSGATE)

PRESENT DAY. 211 UNIVERSE

Earth had been a rare gem of its universe; but humans have never truly suspected the cosmic truth.

The two Argelans, flying at mind-shattering supersonic speeds towards the white, blunt-at-the-top, closely spaced gigantic glass rods skyscrapers -- were like blowtorches of livid lightning. Their forms were sheated by milk-white, impenetrable fields of force. Their destination was the military city of Crahos...

In their Eagle vision, Earth was a blue-white jewel amidst the stars of the heavens, transdimensionally located below Gatan's crystalline grounds; like the opposing side of a two-faced coin. Clouds of storm lightnings of elemental vehemence raged across hundreds of miles, in a straight line on the surface of Gatan; tornados about two hundred miles tall, ten miles wide and three miles thick through their insides swirled like a rampant guard-army across a definite line of demarcation separating the moon-world and other heavenly bodies... A veritable cosmic gate. The Gate gave the planet-moon realm they were entering its nickname: HeavensGate.

The two humanoid beings -- Angels of Heaven, as humanity worshipfully referred to them -- both bore a message of dire urgency: Elements of mankind's top scientists had accidentally discovered Kraniac, using quantum detection technology: and had recognized it as one of a long list of lost, straying worlds out there in the infinities of space. Somehow too, the humans had triangulated that Kraniac regurgitated singularities, and newer universes. The gigantic planet must, in effect, be the planet of THE MAKERS!. The triple planet of Kraniac, Airendris and Gatan... The legendary Planet of the Gods --

"CORONATION, ELEVATION, AND TRANSFORMATION."

The voice of the Spirit of Kraniac appeared in the minds of the two flying Argelans, startling them from their ruminations. As one, they peered down through Gatan's crystalline bulk, to the realm of 'puny' humans...

The titanic world of Kraniac was a fiery fireball of a planet that had just stopped short of active, solar life. There were strings of multi-hued strands of light arising from the crystalline grounds and reaching miles up into the stratosphere; tapestries of glory in their own right. There were moving rainbows of all sizes that adorned strategic spheres of the realm, and also served as stargates or teleportation fields... There were hanging gardens -- floating islands of statueque beauty in great numbers; and land based mountains, lakes, forests and islands of breath-taking beauty. Only the mighty moon-world of Gatan -- almost 'pasted' a thousand miles above the surface of the sun-sized parent world, as cosmic distances went -- was an aberration. The two Argelans were Gabriel and Portighan -- news deliverer alpha-captains of the Realms of Kraniac, and the war world of Gatan.

In appearance, the two beings, built like slender looking, incredibly tall, winged humans, looked to be in their mid-thirties, courtesy of their immortality and the age-defying characteristics that was the nature of the planet itself. They were perpetually mild-faced, athletic, blue-eyed and with elegantly poised slim muscles all over their Adonis bodies. The perfect, almost female looking Angels of old... The gold-and-black colored breastplates that they wore were complemented by Portighan's short, golden hair and Gabriel's long, black mane of hair. Respectively also, the shining, bright-gold, tremendous energy sword that Portighan wore on his waist -- in his divine symbologies of strength, might, power and sovereign-rule -- or the light-sucking, midnight-black, curved matchet that Gabriel slung in a sheath on his back -- in his divine symbologies of strife, discord, contention and rivalry -- were like badges of authority.

"THREE MAJOR EVOLUTIONARY STEPS ARE HUMANKIND EXPECTED TO CLIMB TO BECOME A RACE OF GODS. BUT OUR SUPER ANGELS WOULD DO THEIR BEST TO HALT IT!..." The loud, booming words came with vividly clear mental images of a conglomeration of the past and future of that same message.

"You must speak to Humans thus: "Don't be so impatient to join us, for Kraniac is now at war. And Earth 1, the Ten Hell-worlds of the Antimatter realms, and The Last-Men's galaxy of Caerius II are next to be consumed by a darkside horror of Creation... A horror that eats Gods to survive... Renders Of Universes..."

But we shall abide. It is our birthright! Gabriel saluted the voice inwardly.

Spread out almost like an ice-pick pavilion, the military city spanned out below them, like raised blisters. "Watch out for that tree cloud!!", the softly echoing mental voice of Angel Gabriel was almost playful.

Portighan dived under Gabriel's hurtling form, stretching out his arms to ward off and divert a mighty, gree-trunk sized bolt of fiery-white lightning that hurtled for him even as he stood erect momentarily in midair. The firebolt of eye-dazzling light dissipated around him; a hollow boom of rolling thunder sounded. He laughed shortly and darted through the air to catch up with his ever cool companion. Portighan finally responded, "I bet the humans won't be too surprised to meet us as we truly are...the lugs!" Slightly short of breath, he continued:

"Those buggers had been cleverly utilising a technique that didn't apparently search for our world. They used quantum technology, detected Kraniac right in the stormy seas of galaxies of the 211 universe!..." His voice was slightly tinged with admiration for the 'lugs'.

The air shrieked all around the two Angels as their huge, magnificent, triple pairs of white wings automatically braked. They were approaching their destination: the exact middle of the breath-taking span of skyscraper city made solely for war. Their stern faces acknowledged nothing as they folded back their wings and dropped downwards, like gigantic Eagles, into the central enclosure of a ring of crystalline high-rises that rapidly expanded into a five-mile open square as their crystal-titanium shoe-boots-shod feet touched ground.

"Nice joint," Gabriel said approvingly, twistng his neck sharply side to side, as if to ease some crick in his neck.

"Damn suckers spared no expense to build their war galleries here," Portighan virtually spat the words. "War mongering louts!... They will get their comeuppance soon enough."

"Is that a wish? Come on, Port! They are our brothers, and not the enemy! Besides, they do their jobs well, even better than we once did, I have to admit -- "

"And being such cruel bastards at it!... It's almost as if they are not really Angels."

"Yeah. I know. The universe has changed drastically. These guys, goons though they are, are the new counter-measure system to balance the wrongs in the cosmos."

An inertial elevator instantly lighted up at their feet, read their minds to know their destination and began to carry out their tasks.. What followed was a careening flight through concourses, through telescoping walls and through parade grounds and simulation battlefields of ever-increasing complexity. In spite of the roller-coaster ride, the two Archangels did not so much as blink in agitation. Portighan, indeed yawned theatrically, as if he was bored. It was all for show; for the benefit of the watching Super Angel controllers. Gabriel, seemingly in response, was now tossing his ominous dark sword from one elegant palm to the other, as they slowed down and approached Michael's main office 'complex'.

They were both ushered by a cloaked, coffee-brown faced female Super Angel with a no-nonsense manner about her; into a kind of Officers' Mess, with a long rectangular glassite table with sturdy diamond crystal legs occupying three-quarters length of the long room. Two scores of comfortably padded leather armchairs ringed all around the broad, crystalline table. A kind of elaborate bar affair faced a wall-to-wall vidscreen across the vast room, which was now displaying a representation of the Milky Way Galaxy, formed from hovering nebulous gases.

A wall-to-wall, ceiling-reaching window sat behind the elaborate throne at the head of the vast conference table. Through it, the two Archangels were treated to a breathtaking view of the opulent skyscape of Crahos, with its matrix of skylanes, shuttle-crafts, conveyer fields for pedestrian traffic high up here in the sky, and the imposing menace of the titanic Razer-craft air security mandator warplanes used to quell any unrests brought about by alien visitors to the formidable military city.

Silently the duo watched the vidscreen and waited for their presence to be acknowledged.

Getting bored, fifteen minutes later, the loud voices intruded from the golden doors to their right, down from the long, golden corridors after the gemstones-laden, mighty bulkhead-wall-like double doors that guarded Archangel Michael's War Office and the Sanctum:

"...Nobody knows what's certain or not," a deep, coarse voice thundered from the passageway beyond the doors as several pairs of heavy footfalls approached the open, arched doorway. "The Earthlings could transform themselves to something we can never possibly imagine -- curse them! -- if ravening Angels entered their systems to wipe their new super-race off the face of the Milky Way Galaxy!"

"Then tell Michael to give me twenty Cavalry Super Angels!," the second, gruffier voice said, "and I will storm that puny realm called Earth, and smash it to smithereens in a single day!" The voice had a brutality about it that alarmed even Gabriel.

Are these really --

An impossibly huge, humanoid-shaped being almost twice the size of Gabriel's -- standing at over three hundred feet tall, a hundred greater than the archangel's impressive height -- and glowing with an unnatural light through the entire length of his form -- came through the doors. Eight other gigantic beings followed slowly after him. The creatures were a monstrous immitation of the sixty-foot tall human-based Warrior-Angel forms known as the Hierarchs. Their sinister dark forms bristled with frontal-facing, huge spider-spines, wickedly sharp and evil-looking; all six appendages arching from their backs like free-floating arachnid limbs. Only the glistening, fiery firelight coming from just beneath the surface skin of the ominous limb-tentacle things hinted that they were some kind of deadly, biological ray emission weapons system. Their tremendous shoulders, chests and forearms were protected by a fascinating display of thorny armor. Eight of them appeared out of the bowels of the huge doors after the first one.

They filed out of Michael's offices, one after the other; the Super Angels of War, and military commanders of Heaven's Legions, in all variations of dark skinned complections: There was Ghiscar, Valryon, Vermithrax. Essoviux. Archonei. Meraxes. Vhagar. And bringing the rear, involved in a loud, heated argument with Balerion his second-in-command, came the hothead and presently the most radical Angel in Gatan. General Firellodon Castor. Castor's black skinned face was reminescent of the classic Medusa face, complete with long, wavy strands of multitudes of tiny, fiery-eyed worm-snakes, white-glowing, ready-to-shoot fireballs of malevolent eyes, and massive muscled pair of legs ending with feet that seemed fused with the huge chainsaw iron boots that he wore as footwear. Menacing lightning branches reached down from the suddenly overcast domes of the high ceiling above and hovered above each cosmic monster's head.

Like a battering ram, the hot-blooded Super Angel's form at the rear blurred into sight-defying motion, lurching forwards past the other Super Angels and brushing aside an unshielded Angel; not caring a hoot who it was that stood in his path. The victim found himself propelled upwards and horizontally for quite a distance before his automatic flight control powers arrested the momentum and rightened the suprised Angel just before he hit the far door. The offendinding Super Angel's form retracted in that same freakish blur of light, form and force, back to the rear of their formation, as if it had never moved... The first of the delegation of Super Angels strode past the blown Angel by the entrance door as he was patting his clothes back to order. The thoughts whispered through his head as he began to straighten back up:

I who had strolled through the voids of the deeps of formless creation; who was there at the foundations of the universes; I who bore the sceptre of the Almighty during the stormy night of creation of the Super Angels and the multitudes of lesser Angels, in the Garden of the Cosmos, on ancient Ext... How could things have deteriorated and come to such a pass?

Angel Gabriel lazily saluted the offender as the other approached truculently. By this time, all of Castor's escorts had already passed by him -- as he glanced briefly at their handsome, grim visages and impressive, brutish musculature. The Super Angel Castor paused in front of him, a palm lightly brushing Gabriel's left shoulder.

"As you were, soldier," the high ranker mumbled to him by way of apology. "I don't know my own strength sometimes. Try to stay off doorways when SAs are passing by, you hear? We tend to state our right of way, even when we were not the first to pass," he delivered his parting shot with a wink and stalked out of the building.

Angel Gabriel turned around to look at the impetuous Arch-General. The over-confident Super Angel didn't even recognize him. The commander's voice boomed back to him as he repeated his earlier assertion:

"Just twenty Super Angels, and I will destroy all of the races of the scums, forever!"

You think so?, Gabriel sneered. You have no idea!

"Man is a benign beast, but he won't remain so forever," Portighan commented, assuming the pose of a Council of Wisdom.

That was right on the button, Gabriel thought. Witness such miracles in the fabricating of humanity's basic essence; Humans were essentially spirits clothed by a fleshly body. They possessed a celestial soul and a godly mind; together with a leviathan of a subconscious Id-self that was an analog to the life-force of stars! And not forgetting his cosmic brain -- the envy of us so-called divine entities! All perfect examples of the meticulous work of the Cosmic Designer's creativity on the human animal...

This universe does not sense it now, but the Human is a frightful being; fearfully and wonderfully made by the Makers to survive the course of eternity!

Mankind was, at his most fearsome manifestation, a proton being, clothed in (beg your pardon, Lords!) diabolical powerlessness, and designed originally to rule the Universes... Any wonder why he is so exceptionally beloved of The Father?

He could have said all of those in a few seconds, but he said instead: "They were Father's favorite mass-life creation for a reason."

"Even though they had fallen far short of their true potentials, no sane or enlightened Angel would risk waking their latent, long buried memories of the brutal extinction of their super-race at the hands of Michael and us, his corps of Arch-Angels -- far in the mists of Time. Now we have Super Angels, who think they are the best things that ever walked the Heavens... Which begs the question, that either Castor is insane or he is a crass idiot!..." Portighan trailed off, as if short of breath. Gabriel looked at him with new respect, and mockingly jibed at his friend:

"Why, now that's the longest positive speech I've heard from you all day!... I never guessed you cared so much for the slugs down there. Remind me to send you roses for your prayers."

"I don't care for them. I'm just sick and tired of seeing them being bullied left, right and center. Just because they have become so little."

"It was their choice, brother... They wanted small. Small they got. Don't sweat it. The klugs don't."

"And Lord help us Angels if the homo sapiens accidentally come into the knowledge that the Homo sapien/Fairchild/Doomchild bond was far stronger than even the Councils believed," Portighan added, as if on afterthought. He summed up his dark mood with an impish grin to Gabriel and said: "My advise: Heavens beware!.."

"In Mankind abides monsters!..." Gabriel finished the age-old adage for him, which referenced mankind's most bestial nature that occasionally bursts forth when his moral and existential being was been violently threatened.

Portighan, shrugging noncommitally, was approaching the wall-sized, gestalt vidscreen. Time slowed to a crawl. In the few milliseconds before Portighan had reactivated the vid, a rush of images and sensations from the earlier part of the broadcast coursed through Gabriel...

Misty, fogged, days pass. Years of fiery ruin pass as the first space war flared across planet Earth and through its sister worlds of the solar system.

The initial vanguard of twenty Super Angel Dreadnoughts had failed woefully in terminating the planet... They had simply being vaporised around the orbit of Mars, by an invisible, terrible, ancient trap. Demolished by a cosmic artifact, as if they were packs of matchsticks. Enraged, not heeding the caution of Michael and his own commanders, General Castor had thrown the entire might of Kraniac at the infuriating little planet... And got his nose rubbed in mud --

Surprisingly, retaliation came from an unexpected superpower. The Celestis. For millennia mankind had thought himself alone, not aware of the cosmic power in his midst intent on re-inventing the human race. Completely!... The second voluntary champion of Mankind -- the Caerians -- Zrathianians as the Angels knew the fearsome race of cosmic, long-thought-dead giant race of the First Men -- openly wanted homo sapiens as a slave race: to build their weapons and ships; to further strengthen their ambitious future conquest of the universe, backed by the Celestis' whims and caprices. The juggernaut, light machine-loving, divine race of the Celestis, on the other hand had bigger plans for humanity.

THEY WANTED TO CREATE A FOOLPROOF SOCIETY -- A RACE OF ULTIMATE MAN. WORLD WAR 3 - WHEN IT COMES, HOWEVER IT WILL -- WOULD ONLY BE THE END OF THE BEGINNING OF THE GREATER PLAN FOR HUMANITY. SHE WAS PROJECTED TO BE A RACE WHO WOULD FIGHT AGAINST THE TERROR OF THE DOOMCHILD FOR THE 8TH UNIVERSE; A MOGUL RACE. A RACE OF GOD RENDERS!

And so, before the coming war even blossomed fully into a fury of violence, the Super Angel Overlord sidetracked a flotilla of twenty enormous warships. These ships had to destroy Johannesburg, South Africa, while searching for the Diamatrix-16 SimulfIer -- a universal shaping tool, believed buried deep in the crust where South Africa now stood... Then, satisfied when no such artifact was found, the Overlord gave the order -- eight hours after his fleet had encircled the planet -- for chaos --

New York was struck first, then Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Tokyo, Cairo, Moscow were devastated mercilessly... Then followed Los Angeles, Lagos, Washington, Addis Ababa, London, Lisbon, Paris, Bonn... Most of the major Far East cities remained untouched... Amsterdam, Stockholm, Budapest, Athens, Berlin, Warsaw were crushed out of existence. The Celestis, unable to bear this insult any longer, intervened. Just as the Super Angels began burning a host of Far-East cities, and taking no slaves.... Tokyo, Beijing and all the mighty Asian cities were toasted in furnaces of hellish venom... Collectively, the aliens' quest brought about the great fiery conflagaration that engulfed the Earth. A conflagaration many dubbed The War of the Gods.

The Super Angels, in a horrendous show of fire-power, destroyed modern day Earth. In three days the planet was completely incinerated; becoming a ruined, charred, desert. Those days saw the Earth being plunged in perpetual darkness as the ash, dust and smoke poured off the depths of the planet and blanketted the lower, middle and upper atmospheres. The Angels' weapons of destruction raged like a primeval beast as the divine alien beings scoured across the Earth and through the seas. Seeking whom to devour... Six billion lives perished. Volcanoes constantly erupted, as the awesome weapons of the juggernaut warrior race struck many of Mankind's strongholds. Earth's most stupendous weapons of mass destruction never even made a dent on the mind-staggering space armada. Missiles, nuclear weapons bases and the air and naval super-bases of the U.S., Russia, Japan, Britain, France and Germany simply disappeared.