Lightbringer

Chapter 16: Judgement

I grip the edges of the stand to ground myself and let Elyon's steadying aura wash over me. I drag my eyes away. I cannot be consumed by my own wounds.

"The council will hear your testimony."

I may be one fallen angel, and I may have been wronged, but I do not speak today with one voice. I am the voice of every fallen angel god has wronged, and I am the voice of every human soul tormented on Earth. I do not bear my scars alone, but I also bear the scars of his human and angelic victims. I cannot be consumed by my wounds, because I must show them the wounds inflicted on all of us.

I do not look at him again. I tell my story. I tell all our stories. I let everything out, the anger, the outrage, the fear, the grief, the abuse, the horror, the violence and violation. The pain. The terror. Calming presence or no, it all spills out in a tidal wave of words and stories. A testimony.

When I subside at last, I'm breathing heavily, but there's a pressure inside me that's been released. It feels so good to have finally said it all out loud, to have been heard, and to say it in front of him no less. I return to my seat beside Jesus, who pats my leg. Oddly, I'm shaking, but it's not like the fear or tension shakes I'm used to. It's almost like relief.

"The council calls Jesus, son of Elohim, to the stand," Elyon announces. Jesus rises, and I give him a feeble smile of encouragement. He takes the stand. "The council will hear your testimony."

He recounts the same story he told me millennia ago. He tells them of how, after discovering god's deception, he aided my attempts at anticipating his moves by both helping with ideas and informing on anything that happened in heaven. I hear the indignant huffs from god at that, and when Jesus says that we are friends. I don't know why he's surprised; Jesus did pick a fight with him after he killed me. Did he assume that was just on principle? He informs them that before Elyon interrupted, he had been a hairsbreadth from dying himself (again), which I didn't know. I'd been too far gone by that point.

When he stepped down, there was another long silence. God takes a breath as though to say something, but Elyon shuts him down.

"Out," he says mildly. He waves his hand and two sets of doors – the ones we'd entered through and another on Elohim's side of the table – swing open. "Witnesses too. The council will deliberate and reach a judgement."

I retreat out the doors without protest, Jesus right behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see god start to follow us out our side, but then the doors slam shut behind us. When he doesn't appear, I take it that Elyon... encouraged him to use the other exit.

The hall is all the same paneled blinding white brilliance ridged in gold, and at the end it branches into what seems a pattern of (as far as I can tell) identical hallways. Jesus puts his back to the wall and slides down to sit on the floor. I mirror him on the opposite side. He won't meet my eyes, so I study my outstretched arms. My skin is a darker tone of ash than usual, and I run my fingertip along a jagged network of grooves in my skin where it seems my form must still be knitting back together after being obliterated. Finally, I take a breath to break the silence; neither of us do well left to stew in our thoughts.

"Thanks for avenging me – or trying to, anyway. I know you didn't want to fight your father, so, you know, thanks for that."

"I should've acted sooner. I'm so sorry, Luce. I never thought he'd actually kill you!"

It takes a lot of effort to swallow my I told you so. Because, quite literally, I did. With careful neutrality, I ask: "What did you think was going to happen?"

His shoulders twitch in what might be a shrug, and he ducks his head miserably. "I thought – well, you were his favorite son, and his firstborn! How could he not pull a killing blow? I thought he would see you for the first time in millennia and remember the good times and how much he loved you, and choose peace. Then when the fight started, I was so sure that if it came down to it, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to destroy you."

"He destroyed all of Earth. Billions of human lives snuffed out. And you thought he would balk at me?"

"Yeah but..." he glances up at me then with an apologetic half-smile. "You heard them in there. It's not just father that sees humans as less than. They're his creation, technically, to do with as he pleased, even if that means destroying their earthly bodies. You weren't his creation. You are his child, his favorite son! I just can't believe..." he falters.

When I confronted god after he cursed the first humans in the garden, I hadn't known what he would do. I knew he wouldn't like to be challenged, but I was too angry to give a damn about consequences, and though knowing now what those consequences were I'd still do it again, I wasn't really braced at the time for the severity of how far he would go. And yeah, maybe it's a day late and a dollar short that this reality is finally setting in for Jesus, but I've been there. Adam and Eve didn't hold it against me for not anticipating how far god was willing to go. I can't bring myself to begrudge Jesus, even if I did try to warn him and did die painfully before he heeded me.

"Hey." I reach out and place my hand on his knee. "You're not responsible for his actions. I'm grateful that you stood by me. As far as I'm concerned, we're good."

He smiles sadly at me and pats my hand. For a second, I think he's going to say something, but then Elyon's booming voice rolls out into the halls. "RETURN. VERDICT HAS BEEN REACHED."

We scramble to our feet and head back into the council room. The roaring of my pulse is deafening in my ears as we reenter, and I see my father across the table. Tension crackles like energy in the air.

One of the other goddesses rises to her feet. "Elohim, you stand accused before this council of the following transgressions: Deliberately deceiving the divine council with malicious intent; Unlawful murder of another divine; and Destruction of a creation without approval from your fellow creator, Lucifer, who had intellectual ownership of the concept of said creation. On these three counts of violations of the Covenantal Agreement, the divine council finds you: guilty, on all counts."

All the breath goes out of me. The relief is so abrupt and profound, it's not an emotion but a physical sensation. Jesus has to grab me to steady me; my body goes briefly boneless.

"WHAT?! No!" Elohim's face contorts.

Elyon stands then, shooting him a stern look. "Your sentence shall be as follows: You have proven yourself unworthy of your divinity and an untrustworthy ruler of a realm and of this council. You have betrayed your family and dishonored your position. Therefore, you shall hereby be stripped of it all." The rest of the council rise and extend their arms to the center of the table. A humming that resonates through my body like a plucked string fills the air as the center of the table retracts out, and something rises to hover where the tabletop had been a moment before. I don't need to be told that this is the Immortality Wheel, even though it is not a single wheel but a series of concentric rings, all spinning at different speeds on different axes, and none of them attached to the others. The power radiating off of it is overwhelming – I feel like my hair might be getting singed.

"YOU CAN'T DO THIS!" Elohim screams, slamming his fist against the table.

Elyon's face is stony. He and each of the other gods take hold of a ring and begin doing something I can't make out, shifting them around somehow. "You will be brought lower than your 'angels', and shall henceforth serve as a member of the heavenly court in my realm, and shall never again rule a realm nor create by either word or hand."

A corona of fire blazed around Elohim's form. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME, FATHER!"

As we watch, the fire sputters out. Father shrinks in size; his glow – his divinity – leeching from him until he appears hollowed out. The gods release the wheel, and it retreats beneath the table. Looking at him now, it's hard to believe I ever feared him. Harder still to understand why my heart still jumps erratically when he glares murderously at me.

Before he can unleash his tirade on me, Elyon waves a hand and a new set of doors behind him fly open. A brilliant kaleidoscope of colored light spills out, but it's too bright to make out much about the nature of the realm beyond. "Go, Elohim," he says sternly. "Explore your new home."

My father is dragged backward toward it, much as I was when I was banished from his realm all that time ago. He clutches at anything he can hold onto, howling an incoherent string of threats and obscenities before the doors slam behind him. Forever.