Caelel Silverhawk sat on her bed and peered, through the artifice and magic of what might be the most potent wizard to have ever walked the realms, at the mortal wife of Arral, the Lord of Ruin, as she knelt in a deep and secret part of Heaven and spoke to an angel...that should not exist. The levels of winding implausibility beggared Cae's mind - the idea that this book might be penned as a journal for the wizardess Alia, and that she might delve so deep and discover a secret so utterly impossible, and that the book would then be found by her, possibly the only creature in the vastness of Hell that might grasp the profound importance of it?
If Cae had not ardently believed in the will of the vast and omnipotent Creator, this would have surely convinced her.
Unfortunately...
It also made her begin to think maybe the Destroyer had as much sway in the realms as his divine opposite.
Lucifer Morningstar.
The Dawn-Bringer.
The Shining One.
Lucifer Morningstar was one of the most famous angels in the annals of Heaven's vast catalog of martyred heroes. His exploits remained spoken of by Proctors and Scholars alike, telling newly born angels of the heights they might accomplish. But they were old legends. Old stories. Old heroics. His stories were respected, yes. But the age made them glow less and less, even in the eternal glories of Heaven - as newer, brighter sparks caught, flared, and then dimmed in turn. Cae had only passingly paid attention to his stories, more fixated on mortal heroics and mortal skill - but she could still remember the most notable events.
He had saved an entire realm by luring a demonic army from the ever duplicating House of Betrayal into the edge of the Eversea, where the sun set every day, and brought the sky down upon their heads. The boiling steamwall still marked the edge of mankind's dominion on that world. He had once faced the demon known only as the Time Tyrant by cleaving between falling raindrops with his wings to smite the beast with his spiked mace, the Dawn. He had once matched wits and wills with the Queen of Sharos as her world boiled into prismatic vapor under the weight of her overset and uncontrolled magics, and after three days and three nights of debate and discourse, he had ushered her and the realm of Sharos into a five century golden age.
But, like many of Heaven's heroes, he had died valiantly in battle.
Only, as it seems...
He had not.
Cae did not dare move. She did not dare breathe. She did not risk even fidgeting her wings - anything that might disturb Alia's journal was to be avoided. She leaned forward, watching as Alia rapped her knuckle against her chin, her eyes hooded and focused as she peered at Lucifer Morningstar. "I have read a lot of books," she said, quietly. "And I have asked a lot of angels a lot of questions. And none have managed to answer the most important one."
"
Oh
?" Lucifer asked, his voice amused.
"What the hell even is an Archangel?" Alia asked, shaking her head as she snapped one finger to conjure a small and comfortable chair from glittering sparks. The wood had barely formed from the ether when she sat down upon it, leaning back and cocking her legs to the side, assuming a pose of such pure comfort that it startled a laugh out of the bound and nude Morningstar.
"
I have not the foggiest,"
he said, his voice amused as his lips skinned back - his teeth glowed, as much as his eyes did, as if the light was trying to escape from him. "
They called me it - for a time. Until I was cast down here."
"And why was that?" Alia asked.
"
They learned how I did it,"
he said, quietly. "
How I became like this. And once they knew the truth, the only answer was to un-know it. To un-learn it."
Alia leaned forward. "So, you know a truth that the angels don't?" she asked. "I've been meaning to ask about the origins of the universe - all their historical epics are woefully short on mathematics and awfully thick on florid prose and grotesque metaphors about jizzum."
This startled another laugh from Lucifer. "
Who
are
you?"
"Alia," Alia said, simply.
"
That is all?"
"Do you want my titles? They've been applied to be my a horrendous string of horribly bloated would be lovers, sycophants and supreme sovereigns, each as useless and meddlesome as the last." She flicked one hand, shaking her head. "They describe me roughly as well as your name - Morningstar, really now, name the angel that glows in the dark after a star? But I did meet an angel named Hawkdive, and...would you believe it, he had the wings of a hawk and he enjoyed diving." She sighed. "I think more mortals should visit Heaven, it would shatter enough illusions that we might have some genuine progress in the mortal realms for once in the past thousand years."
Lucifer was silent for a moment. "
I didn't glow,"
he said, his voice amused. "
Until I became the archangel."
"Ah," Alia said.
"
And yes. I would like your titled, if only so we might have something to make mirth with over,"
Lucifer said, smiling at her. "
I admit, this is me trying to prolong the conversation. When you've been trapped in an isolated cell for...what is the year?"
"It is the 5
th
year of the Suzerain of the Comet," she said.
"
Huh. Six thousand years,"
Lucifer said. "
Seemed shorter."
Alia chuckled. "So, the origins of the universe, as you are six thousand years closer to it than any other angel I've met..." She arched an eyebrow.
"
I don't know,"
he said, simply.
"You don't
know
?" Alia asked, sitting up in her seat. "How in the Fundament can you not know?"
"
Because those poetic histories were just as bloody useless back then as they are now. Because they're not histories. Heaven loves to crow about ten thousand years of unbroken history, of an eternal vigil over the Creator's creation. A place for everyone and everyone in their place, down to the last T. It's absurd on the face of it - you can't have a continous chain of knowledge and history while fighting an eternal, constant war against an infinite enemy and half of everything tha tis ever learned is declared a secret, to be kept only in heads that are so easily seperated from the shoulders of their bearers. It's shocking we know even half as much as we do!"
He sighed, sagging back in the chains. "
...sorry, I was a bit of a historian in my day."
"You were?" Alia asked, sounding curious. "I always assumed angels had no jobs. Hence why they appear to come pre-assembled with internal rectal scaffolding."
Lucifer chuckled. "
Oh, a few of us have things we enjoy. I know..."
His face fell. "
I...knew...an angel who once gardened."
Alia nodded, tapping her knuckle against her chin, fascination burning on her features. "So, the history Heaven teaches is a lie?"
"
To a lie, they'd need to know they're wrong. More...a guess."
"Remarkably charitable, for someone chained up for six thousand years," Alia said, her voice dry.
"
Again. It seemed shorter."
Lucifer smiled and ducked his head forward, his hair the glossy black of a raven plunging through darkest night. The bangs covered his glowing eyes, but their light still shone along those plush, kissable lips. "
I admit, it will seem quite long, once you take your leave, my title-less Alia."
She shifted in her seat. "...one of my titles was The Incomparable Apple," she said.
"
Delicious,
" Lucifer crooned.
Alia, her cheeks showing two dark spots of a blush, shook her head. "No, ahem, in the culture of the Suzerain, where I was so named, calling a woman an apple is another way of calling her...a bitch." At Lucifer's expression, she continued. "Beautiful, delicious, but my seeds are poison."
Lucifer tilted his head, his grin growing whimsical. "
...so, delicious?"
"You are a very silly angel," Alia muttered, those spots growing across her cheek. She was pointedly looking up at his wings, not down. She leaned forward, steepleing her fingers against one another like a vizier of old. "N-Now, not to get distracted, but what you've said begs repeating: there is no concrete history of the universe's origins? No actual documents? No records? No memory stones?" At each question, Lucifer shook his beautiful head, his glowing smile thin and amused. Alia sat back in her chair, frowning as she flattened her palms against her thighs. "Well, damn."
"
I'm sorry that your quest needs to end in failure,
" Lucifer said.
Alia sighed, slowly. Her eyes thinned to slits and she closed them.
"
...assuming, of course, it was knowledge you sought,"
Lucifer said, his voice faintly edged - a catch in them, like a notched blade rasping against a whetstone. The note caught on Alia's ears and she jerked her head up, frowning at him. Their eyes met and for a moment, suspicion darkened the air between the two of them - Cae leaned forward, her breath catching, her own body so forgotten that the faint throbbing of her buttocks from sitting with her legs crossed and settled onto the edge of the bed was a mere faint annoyance. She bit her lower lip, thinking furiously as she did so. What was it that Lucifer was worried about? Was it his own personal power?
