War of the Third Heaven

C H A P T E R T W E L V E W A R O F T H E T H I R D H E A V E N And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. — Revelation 12:7-9; from the Scriptures of Truth, the Holy Bible in its uncorrupted form, The Qanah Archives, circa A.D. 2042, City of Ariel T H E A N C I E N T H E I G H T S Revelationform Drakon clung with Sheol-forged claws to the mountainous spine of the Night Monster as she undulated through the towering blackness of the rift. With fluent quickness, Leviathan’s scion traveled the lengths and breadths of the firmament newly revealed—the Ancient Heights, the plane of battle of Spirit-War as it had persisted since the days of Angelore, since the time of The Great Rebellion, when betrayal and hatred and war entered the hearts of the creation, as is recorded in the burning coals that lie in the midst of the whirling Wheels of the Guardians of the Sacred Glade. Like an enormous predatory fish, Lilith stalked the topological depressions and contours of the intersected dimensions, for an uplift of terrain and a broad unstable plane had formed at the collision of the earthly and spiritual domains—a jagged wall of raven-black peaks capped with fire rimming a volatile flat-land below. Cracks in the crust of the continuum vented a cadmium-hued, plasma-rich substance mingled with violent eruptions of smoke. The peaks around its perimeter were tall and angular and jutted inward like the teeth of a shark, giving the appearance of an arena of battle from which there could be no escape. Drakon’s fiery hide blazed in the darkness as if charged with indomitable power, and his ten crowns gleamed with the fire of the mountaintops. His seven sets of ophidian eyes simmered like molten gold as he marveled at the army that he’d bred, summoned and assembled in rebellion, corruption and deception. “To war,” he called to the four that had been bound at Perath—those whom Sariel had with reluctance freed from their bondage in accordance with the prophesied perfection of His wrath. Their mutilated forms rolled before Lilith’s serpentine bulk—impossible lumps of protoplasmic monster—drawing power from the darkness, secreting trails of a viscid, mucus-like substance in their wakes. Their mounted armies, two hundred million strong, surged at their sides like bedlam loosed, their toothy mouths fuming with fire, smoke, and brimstone. Airborne plagues of locust-entities flanked Night Monster’s girth like thrumming clouds of lepidopterous fog. Like horses prepared for battle, they appeared, and on their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. The scourges of Anemos surrounded Lilith, as well, four vertical columns of insatiable evil twisting into the airless infinity at four posts surrounding Drakon’s position on the battlefield. Over the saw-toothed ridges of the continuum spilled pack after pack of Hellion, Gyre, Daeva, Afreet, Lamia, Succubus, Jinniyeh, and Barghest. By the tens of thousands, they came, on wing, foot, fin, claw, hook, and hoof—these and many other menacing breeds and beings and creatures and powers whose allegiance lie with the Dragon Reborn, whose adversaries were all those bearing the Blood of the Lamb; all those bearing the Word of His Testimony. Powerfully, the onslaught of entities broke upon the beleaguered planes, yet those who dwell in the heavens were awaiting evil’s return to their proper domain. Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of light-bearing entities illumed the darkness-eternal. The Nine Orders were numbered among them, holding their positions at the front of those assembled. The Seraphim: fiery, six-winged flying serpents with human hands and feet and human voices. The Guardians of the Sacred Glade with their whirling Wheels: their bodies and wings filled with eyes in front and behind, around and within, their Wheels churning like burning disks beside them. The Thronos: Third of the Nine, Masters of Thrones and Kingdoms, their appearances like those of sphinxes, with women’s heads and lion’s bodies and tails. The Dominions: glorious entities of transcendent image, Masters of Domains and Territories. The Archomai or Principalities: evanescent and wraith-like of being and form, Masters of Times and Orders. The Exesti or Origins: cloaked in shimmering robes with gnarled staffs in their hands, their antediluvian faces shadowed beneath darkened cowls, Masters of the Universal Laws and Forces. The Virtues: in appearance like decarnate conflagrations roiling upon the blackened expanse, Masters of Divine Power and Mighty Works. The Watchers: Warders of the Children of Men, shape-shifting residents of the earthly plane, constant beholders of Their face in heaven, whose bodies shone like the brightness of stars. And the Archangels: the Supreme of Creation, the Seven of the Highest Order: Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Sariel, Gabriel, Remiel, and Michael, their Great Prince, aloft in the blackness above and before all celestial ranks.