The Third Heaven Series Boxed Set: Books (1-3) Page 2

  Michael pushed off against the cliff and rappelled sideways, hurtling through the air while the whirlwind raged below him. His feet landed on the crag, and he leaned over to inspect his brother’s work.

  “The strut will hold. Well done, and I think it is time for a break.”

  “Agreed,” said Lucifer. “Michael, when you said you could use my help you neglected to mention that it would take all day.”

  Michael laughed. “You are so busy I rarely get to spend time with you. Besides — work using your own hands and not relying on your servants could do you some good.”

  Lucifer rolled his eyes and then smiled.

  “Next time you desire to spend time with me try to think of something less dangerous.”

  Michael laughed. “Oh come now would you have me believe that you would prefer being in the palace composing sonnets, and miss all this?”

  Michael opened his hand to present the spectacle of nature that surrounded them.

  Lucifer eyed the stretched landscape of the canyon. The splendor of the chasms walls awed even him. He noted that they all stood as mites on the underside of the mountain that was Heaven. Lucifer turned his eyes to look below and surveyed the Abyss beneath them. The winds of the Maelstrom churned in its claw-like attempts to sweep them away. Stars, uncountable as grains of sand, splayed themselves like crystal across the canopy of Heaven's golden and black sky, each a visible reminder of the barrier that separated the realms. Lucifer had to admit it was indeed an impressive view.

  Michael yelled over the whine that came from the Maelstrom so that his brother could hear. “Alas, I do confess that I enjoy the sound of your voice. Your melody is soothing, and who else could I trust to extend the cliff face — these lazy friends of mine?”

  Michael thumbed in the direction of his smiling three comrades while they hammered spikes into place.

  They laughed in retort, “Hey! We are right here!”

  Lucifer chuckled.

  “It would seem that our work here is complete,” said Michael, “Everyone take a rest. I shall attend shortly.”

  Michael watched in satisfaction as tendrils of new ground sprang from the sides of Heaven as living rock grew to embrace the Cadmime extension.

  Good, Heaven will have more room for the changes El hast commanded.

  The ground began to groan. The earth swelled, buckled, and stretched to overtake the beam planted in the canyon's side. Michael and his men smiled from the familiar sound of the land expanding.

  Michael loved building, to see the results of the fruit of his labor. The Lord had given him the plans to the city, and he had overseen every aspect of its growth.

  El would be pleased, he thought.

  Michael prepared himself to release the buckle that latched him to the side of the mountain. The winds of the Abyss were but yards below him, and he could hear the howl of the hurricane that separated the heavens. A dimensional barrier crossed only by Ladder or special dispensation from El. The winds rotated in cyclonic fashion as a whirlwind: a Maelstrom that encircled the Abyss, a realm of bottomlessness and the flux from which the second and third heavens met. El had said that dissolution was the natural Ladder to enter into the realm. A peeling away of one's mortal coil would send one careening from the reality of the First to the Third Heaven, the Kingdom of God, a realm superimposed over all other layers of reality.

  Michael knew that expanding the ground was dangerous work, for the Abyss pulled at two realms and sought to consume within itself anything that lay on its outskirts. Michael was careful not to stray too close to the event horizon.

  Lucifer and the rest of the workers unlatched their harnesses and pushed against the cliff wall. Outstretched wings allowed the updraft of the wind from the Maelstrom to jet them upwards to the edge where they landed safely, still tethered to the stakes on the cliffs.

  “Secure these lines,” commanded Lucifer. “The ground will shift soon.”

  Lucifer looked down to his brother who still inspected the strut supports.

  He yelled below. “Michael quickly, get out of there!”

  Michael had already unleashed his tether when the ground shook, and the mountain heaved outward encasing the implanted beam. A cropping of rock jutted out, striking Michael in the face and knocking him backward. Untethered, Michael waved his arms in a vain attempt to balance himself, but the rock slid and collapsed from under his feet, and he plummeted into the winds of the Maelstrom.

  All watched in horror as the winds of the hurricane swept Michael away and rushed to drain him into the Abyss.

  “Michael!” Lucifer yelled.

  Lucifer’s face grew anxious, and he turned to a worker behind him. “Quickly give me your harness,” he said.

  The angel unlatched the golden rope and lanyards that overlaid his garments and handed them over to the Chief Prince.

  “Lucifer … Michael is lost ––"

  Lucifer looked at the angel and raised his voice. “He is lost when I no longer draw breath.”

  Lucifer buckled the clamp to his waist, pummeled a spike into the ground, turned, and then rappelled back down the side of the cliff.

  He untied the grappling ropes. Each rope held a twelve-inch metal spike to latch onto the rock face. He placed the harness over his body, secured each fastener, and latched the hooks into the rings of his belt to support his weight.

  El –– please give me strength; let me not be too late.

  Lucifer looked out towards the center of the Abyss; the blackness was enveloping, for not even light escaped its edge. He knew that there was no survival if he fell in. He would be lost in the bottomless pit that separated the realms. Lucifer shed his garments and the light from his skin burst in all directions. His flesh transformed into living diamond, and the colors of the rainbow skipped about him. His twelve tendril-like wings unfurled and waved, as each vine of energy caught the gusts that blew from the Maelstrom. Stripped of his raiment, his skin reflected the light, and he gleamed so that onlookers fell to their knees and raised their hands to shield their eyes.

  Lucifer lifted the grapples over his head and swung them, each spin gaining increased momentum. Each wave of his arms vibrated the air, and a screeching sound rang in the ears of all about. He released the grapples, and they flew across the expanse of the whirlpool and stuck into a crag on the other side.

  He tugged on the rope. It held fast, but the winds from the Maelstrom buffeted the line, making it move and shift. He tied the end to a boulder near him until the rope became taut and held firm. He oscillated his breathing in his ears so that his body would pulsate as a beacon for Michael. He turned down the brightness of his flesh, and all ceased from covering their eyes. He threw another line towards his workers. They caught it, latched their bodies around it, and braced themselves against a boulder.

  “Watch the line,” he yelled to the workers. “Do not let it give way!”

  The angels nodded. Lucifer looked into the Abyss, attached himself to the rope, and climbed up on the line, dangling upside down. His ankles and hands were wrapped tightly over the line as he shimmied himself towards the center of the pounding gales. The squall beat at him; its force and his weight made the rope buckle. It gave way some. He looked in the distance to see his fellow angels struggling to hold it tightly against the stone. He turned his face rearward towards the opposite end, and he could see the line starting to slip.

  He opened the pores of his back, howled from the vocal cords that lined the muscles of his trapezoids, and yelled. “Michael! Raise your hand that I might see you! Michael, can you hear me?”

  He strained his eyes to see any hope of his brother, but could not see him. He focused himself to look for movement in the whirlwind and beheld Michael tossed about by the gale force winds and struggling to release the straps from the harness that held his wings against his back. Lucifer watched as Michael’s body swirled around the edge of the whirlwind knowing that he would have but one pass to rescue him, for with two passes, he would drain
into the Abyss. Lucifer lowered his hand to prepare to hoist his brother from the storm.

  Michael headed towards him, tumbling and tossed about, his body thrown aloft like a piece of driftwood on crashing rapids. Closer, Lucifer lowered himself down the more. Michael raced towards him; yards removed and then with increasing swiftness mere feet away. Timing his reach, Lucifer lunged to grasp his brother from the grip of wind and gale, strained to extend himself without also falling into the whirlpool. Michael reached up and grasped his brother’s hand and they interlocked wrists.

  Lucifer struggled to hold onto him, but the Maelstrom would not let Michael go, and they stood in stalemate with Lucifer hanging on suspended over the canyon of typhonic winds.

  “We cannot both be saved—leave me,” yelled Michael.

  Lucifer struggled to fly with his brother, but Michael was too heavy and the winds too strong. The squall howled their disapproval, and with a gust that smashed into them both, the line snapped, and Lucifer plummeted with Michael into the circling storm.

  Lucifer held fast to Michael and spoke as they hurtled towards the event horizon of the crushing black that was the Abyss.

  Lucifer spoke into Michael’s ear. “Never ask me to leave you, nor from following you, for where you go, I will go, and if you die, I will die.”

  Michael hugged his brother as they spun uncontrollably and jetted towards the event horizon of the Abyss. Michael closed his eyes as the darkness edged closer to overtake them. “Surely El will save us,” he said.

  Lucifer looked up and beheld that the Waypoint of Argoth was within view, and his mind raced with a plan to escape.

  “No…El hast given us means to save ourselves.” Lucifer struggled to lift his finger and pointed to the Waypoint of Argoth. “Look, do you see?”

  Michael nodded. “Hurry, there is not much time!”

  “El tore, shay crom mere ley,” Lucifer roared.

  Speaking in the draconic tongue, Lucifer commanded the doors between the realms to open and summoned a Ladder.

  In obedience, a thunderhead gathered, swirled, then encircled above the duo, and ejected bolts of lightning. A storm birthed from the billows and stoked the winds of the Maelstrom even more. Winds howled to one another in competitive shrieks as the new tempest fed the gale already running through the canyon. The force was such that the cliff face started to shred for the might of the winds.

  The ground around the cliff's edge buckled and heaved in response. Workers watched with mouths agape as a rainbow colored funnel cloud crackled with thunder, lightning, and reached down as a great hand into the cyclonic drain that was the Maelstrom.

  Michael and Lucifer spun closer to the event horizon of the Abyss, carried adrift by the current of the gale. The vortex of descending light twisted, screamed, and whined as the winds of the maelstrom fought against the winds of a Ladder summoned by the word of El.

  Hurricane wrestled against cyclone, and when Lucifer saw that they approached the event horizon, he heaved Michael into the air with all of his might. Michael quickly ascended and lifted away from him as the funnel of light gripped him and held him fast. The Ladder sucked him high into the sky and tore him free from the clutches of the Abyss.

  Michael screamed in agony and reached out as he watched his brother flail helplessly into the enveloping shroud of darkness. The black dragged Lucifer into the whirlpool that was the bottomless pit.

  Michael lunged across the sky, falling through a tunnel exploding in color and hot white bursts of plasma. The Ladder then folded on itself, hurtled towards the ground, and slammed Michael into the dirt on his back.

  Workers round about ran to their leader.

  Coughing, wheezing, his muscles throbbing, Michael struggled to rise to his feet. “Get this harness off me!” He yelled.

  The workers raced to unlatch the straps that bound their master’s wings. Michael moved in agitation, for despite their swiftness, they moved still too slow for his taste. The harness then fell to the ground, and with wings unfurled, Michael ran to fly to his brother’s aid, but several angels tackled him so that he would not plunge headlong back into the Abyss.

  Michael struggled against them, and tears welled in his eyes as he listened, for the sound of music that echoed from Lucifer’s body, music that sprang from the soft motion of winds against his skin, faded into silence. Nothing remained but the incessant howls of the Abyssal whirlwinds. Slowly, the sparkle that emanated from Lucifer’s crystalline flesh, dissipated in the blackness, and he was seen no more.

  Michael let loose a wail despairing in self-crimination. Gripping loose dirt in his palms, he smeared his face moaning and coiled over weeping.

  Suddenly, the ground shook, and howling and lightning burst from the Abyss, making Michael to cease his self-flagellation and take note.

  For the Ladder had still not dissipated, and though its base was lost within the darkness of the bottomless pit, lightning arched from the funnel cloud and bolts of plasma struck out blasting the landscape in all directions. Michael and the workers watched as the Maelstrom turned bright white, and the earth underneath them buckled, heaved, and collapsed beneath them.

  Each ran as the earth opened and chunks of the cliff fell into the Maelstrom. They lifted themselves into the sky to escape, when suddenly an explosion rocked across the canyon, and a blast of heated wind flung them all backward into trees and rock. Michael fell crashing to the ground and turned to his rear to see the land behind them was gone, and the Maelstrom was all that the eye could see.

  The Ladder then lifted into the sky, twisting, screaming in howling fury. A figure gleamed at its base, and Michael watched as the Ladder turned, hurtling towards them.

  Each angel ran and flew to escape the ensuing beam of light and plasma and leaped out of the way to prevent from being struck. The familiar sound of Lucifer’s body echoed across the canyon.

  The funnel touched the ground, and then Lucifer followed and slammed into the earth. The impact from his fall cratered the land, throwing rock and trees aside while fire and white smoke hissed from his frame. Lucifer was on bended knee as the colors of the rainbow skipped around him as fallen snow. Flecks of prismatic light followed him and settled on his person, and Lucifer glowed as light from a star.

  Onlookers mouths dropped at what they had witnessed and bowed in awe that the Chief Prince had survived the Abyss. “Lightbringer,” an angel said. Others whispered the words about them and bowed themselves in respect for their prince.

  Lucifer rose from bended knee. His body shivered uncontrollably; sore that two of heaven's forces had vied over him. His face twinkling in light, Lucifer turned to speak to Michael in the melodic tenor that was his voice. “Are you all right,” he asked.

  Michael coughed and turned towards his brother. “I am –– thanks to you. Are you ok?

  Lucifer replied, “Aye, sore, very sore, but El be praised we survived.”

  “I thought I had lost you,” said Michael.

  Lucifer laughed. “I thought I had lost me too.”

  “There is something that you should know,” said Michael.

  Lucifer scrunched his face while massaging the back of his neck. He shook his head and looked at his brother curiously. "And what might that be?”

  Michael hesitated to answer but looked at his brother, paused, and then spoke quietly under his breath. “That brace –– well it fell when I unlatched from the cliff. Sorry."

  Lucifer’s eyes widened as he looked at Michael in disbelief. He lifted himself from the ground, as he wiped grime and dust from himself. “Michael Kortai! I am not going to do that work all over again!”

  Michael bowed his head slightly; his eyes darted from Lucifer to the ground and then back again. He hunched his shoulders and pulled from his robes the spike that had dislodged from the wall. He held it up and tossed it to his brother.

  Lucifer caught it, looked at it, looked at Michael, and then chuckled. Michael too found himself snickering, and like a viral infection that spread; e
ach broke out in stomach bursting hilarity as workers who beheld their rescue and escape ran to assist them and gathered round to see the two laid out, flat on their backs laughing.

  Suddenly a flash of white light appeared. The group covered their eyes as Gabriel stood before them in shining white robes and a staff in hand. “The Lumazi are summoned to court,” he said.

  Lucifer and Michael rose to stand in their brother’s presence.

  Lucifer stopped laughing, and his tone grew somber. “Of course,” he said. “We shall leave at once.”

  Gabriel looked at them and pinched his nose against the odor that floated about them; grime and dirt covered their face, and dust fell from their clothing.

  “You both stink,” Gabriel said.

  They laughed, and Michael pointed at his brother, “It’s him.”

  Lucifer cocked his head and gave Michael a scowl.

  “Well, you do stink,” said Michael.

  The sound of falling rock came from their rear, and Gabriel peered to his left to see behind and past them. Quickly, they moved to his left to block his view: and when he moved to his right to see, Michael and Lucifer also moved.

  Gabriel frowned and placed his hands on his hips. “This is not funny.”

  Lucifer took the spike he held in his hand and tossed it to Gabriel, who caught it.

  “Indeed, you know not the half of it,” Lucifer sniggered.

  Michael and the rest of the work crew burst out in laughter. Gabriel looked upon them all as if they were all mad. Each walked past him laughing.

  “You really missed it,” said one.

  “If you had just come a bit earlier," said another.

  Once again, Gabriel heard the sound of crashing rock to his rear. He turned his head, and Gabriel’s eyes widened at the spectacle before him. The cliffs face and large chunks of land fell into the mouth of the Maelstrom, and the gale ripped and shredded boulders apart until nothing but sand remained. Gabriel looked at his brothers as they walked away and then turned to look once more at the chaos they had left behind. He shook his head in disbelief and made his way to run after them.