Disappear: Into Shadow

- CHAPTER TWENTY THREE -

When Azrael arrived in Hell, it felt the collective guilt of those souls and their perception of the nothingness. Their presence created the oppressive weight and pressure. The Watcher could not detect any love in the darkness.

To Azrael's perception, the void seemed dimly lit by the scattered and inert souls. The dark stretched outwards over depthless, onyx black flatlands. The bumper crops of these prairies were the dim souls themselves, and the crop was growing. With each passing moment, a new arrival descended like a dim star. Appearing in the blackness of the void, the souls fell like an evening's rain on darkened ground. Since they began arriving, these black plains had never seen drought.

Azrael, sensing that Dagan's soul wasn't going anywhere, left to explore the flats. Mapping out the expanding reaches of the nothingness, the Watcher spent a long, heavy time among those souls. Crossing a small jagged hill of nothing, Arzael reached another ranging prairie. It too was filling with souls. There was a blinding flash. Cascading out of the blackness, a spiralling flight of Elohim fell into Hell.

Their fall was not the dim rain of arriving souls, but a fiery blaze of colour. Their flaring lights illuminated the multitudes on the black ground. Their descent did not slow. They crashed down, carving swaths of rumbled nothing up from the black ground. Souls were flung about, scattered, in their wake. Azrael recognized that the new arrivals were Watchers. Yet, it noted that something about their appearance had changed.

Their lights were far brighter that any of the souls lost in the void, as bright as Azrael's, but their glow had changed. Their lights had hardened, darkened, flattened. Azrael watched these dark, yet bright lights appear out of the ground one after the other. While Azrael was a shimmering, shapeless entity, with a sparkling eye of fire at its reflective center, many of those who crashed down were silhouettes. Their lights were dark shades of purples and reds. A few were onyx shades of perfect darkness that blended seamlessly against the backdrop of this nothingness.

Disoriented, they gathered together. Calling out to the one leading them from the deep craters, Azrael asked, "Sataniel, why are you here?"

Sataniel's silhouette radiated a light of glistening crimson that pulsated, expanding and contracting. Weary, he explained that they had been pulled away from the world by the Angels and ordered to remain in the Heavens. The Angels could not tolerate constant interaction with the souls. He told Azrael of the 'Council'. This was a new name and Azrael took note of it.

"The Seraphim, they call themselves," Sataniel howled as he told Azrael of their plight. "These two Angels pulled us from the world and those we watched over. Leaving us in Heaven, they told us to manage the souls there. We weren't allowed to leave. They've grown wings and ascended themselves, and their city, into the clouds. To keep the souls out, they built gates and walls."

One of the fallen Watchers added, "The souls would follow us when we moved. We couldn't get into the Silver City and neither could they."

"That's right," Sataniel agreed. "Barred from the highest Heaven and kept from the world," The collective murmured their agreements and corollaries to the tale, but it was Sataniel who spoke. "We refused to be trapped and kept away from the souls on Earth, so we left. We blended into the land. Once we slipped into the river, the souls began seeking out the Angels. They were splattering themselves against the new gates of the highest Heaven. It wasn't long before they were plucked from the world again. This time they called themselves Angels of Wrath." Sataniel scoffed, "And some other codswallop about blasphemy and treason against the exploration. We were brought before the Seraphim Council."