Darksiders: The Abomination Vault (28 page)

And from the center of the great winged phalanx, wearing a simple silver breastplate over his traditional robes of green, appeared Azrael.

“Death,” he greeted them as he settled upon the lip of stone. “War.”

“Azrael,” Death returned. Then, after a puzzled look shared with his brother, “Don’t take this amiss, but—”

“What am I doing here?” the angel concluded for him.

The featureless mask dipped in a nod. “I sent Dust to the domain of the Council. I was expecting my brother and sister.”

“Apparently, the Charred Council has decided Fury and Strife are required elsewhere. Word of the Abomination Vault has begun to spread, Death. More than a few factions throughout Creation are preparing to move.”

“We’ve met some of them,” War said blandly.

“Funny, that,” said Death. “Considering that it wasn’t long ago they were telling me that all four of us were assigned to this endeavor.”

“Hell’s interests could be more widespread than we’ve seen,” the younger Horseman suggested.

“It could. Or …”

“Or?”

“Or the Council has decided, now that there’s a real risk of Hadrimon and Belisatra awakening the Abominations, that they want to keep Strife and Fury in reserve to protect them in case we fail.” Death shrugged. “I suppose I can’t blame them, really.”

“I’m sorry,” Azrael interjected, “but did you say
Hadrimon
? I—”

“In a moment. One issue at a time.” Death leaned over the edge, watching the angels settling in below. “So the Council sent you instead?”

“The Council doesn’t
send
us anywhere,” Azrael bristled. “They sent Dust to us, along with a message
requesting
our assistance. Since we’re already allies in this, and none of us wants these weapons awakened, I agreed.”

“Why you?” War asked. “You’re a scholar, not a soldier.”

“I’d be offended if you thought otherwise,” the angel replied. Then, more seriously, “I may not have devoted my life to warfare, but I’ve still seen more of it than most of my people. And my powers are not entirely without use on the battlefield.”

Death snickered. “I imagine not.”

“I felt it to be, um, less than politically expedient to ask Abaddon to lead this particular force.”

It was now War’s turn to laugh softly.

“I could not,” the angel continued, “simply reassign one of the other generals without a long discussion. And I felt that sending a phalanx to serve under your command
without
a ranking leader might prove equally problematic—again, given recent, shall we say, misunderstandings between the Horsemen and the White City. So that left me. You’re certain the enemy is coming
here
?”

“They need—something in the earth, here, to awaken the Abominations,” Death said. “Or at least, to awaken them for any great duration. I’ll tell you the rest later, if necessary.”

“I see.” Azrael didn’t sound especially thrilled with the arrangement. “Tell me, can your steeds make the leap to the ground from this high up?”

The Riders both started briefly at the sudden non sequitur. “Um, yes,” War said. “I wouldn’t want to risk it from much higher, but yes. The trouble was getting them down to the ledge and the tunnels in the first place.”

Azrael nodded. “The same wards that prevent us from entering this realm, save at specific points, prevent you from dismissing them and summoning them as you normally would.”

“Precisely.”

“I’ll have some of my angels construct a harness and fly them down. It won’t be the most dignified position—for anyone involved—but we’ll get them there. Just make sure you tell them to cooperate.”

War scowled; Death just snorted once.

“I think,” he said to War, “that we ought to keep our feet out of reach of their hooves for a few hours after this. Thank you, Azrael. We appreciate the assistance.”

“You’re most welcome. Now, if you please, I dislike having to ask multiple times … You said
Hadrimon
?”

“According to Lilith,” Death told him, “that’s the true name of the angel we’re facing. Apparently he sought her assistance before joining forces with Belisatra.”

“Hadrimon … I can’t believe it …” Now it was Azrael whose attentions seemed focused solely on the activities below.

“You know him.” It was clearly not a question.

Azrael sighed deeply. “Yes.” Then, at the expectant pause, “It’s not a tale I enjoy telling, Death. It doesn’t exactly paint the angels of the White City in our finest light.”

“As opposed to
my
people exterminating whole worlds and creating the obscenities that have gotten us into this whole debacle in the first place?”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose when you put it that way, shame is a relative thing.”

“Then let’s hear it, while we have the time.”

The angel permitted himself a second, lighter sigh, and spoke.

T
HIS BEGAN
, you must understand, quite some centuries ago. It was in the early days of the Charred Council’s reign—that is, the Council had made themselves known to us as guardians of the Balance, but they had not yet succeeded in, ah, let’s say
convincing
Heaven and Hell to abide by their proffered pacts and treaties. As such, we were in the midst of one of the most brutal warring periods between the forces of the Blessed and the Damned. The bloodshed, the devastation … The worst of it was just as horrible as the devastated worlds that your own people left in their wake, and in
our
case we weren’t even trying to destroy the realms, just the enemies who had conquered them. A terrible, violent time.

I emphasize this, you understand, because it is the only justification for what came next. Not
sufficient
justification, I think, but all I have to offer in our defense.

You know of the
Codex Bellum
? The angels of Heaven have lived by that register of laws, codes, and customs for eons, now. Only those of us who were involved in its creation, or who were born under its aegis, can hope to fully grasp its intricacies. No outsider, however wise, has managed to do so. It is that layered, that complex, that precise.

That restrictive. Too restrictive, I sometimes think.

It includes, among so much else, the rigid conventions of interaction between angels of differing positions, different social castes, different military ranks. What behavior is appropriate, and when—and what behavior is
never
appropriate. For the most part, we have little difficulty in following those strictures; we angels are, by and large, creatures of thought, not emotion. Still, we have our drives, our desires, our needs, the same as anyone else; and like anyone else, sometimes what we desire and what we
should
desire fall out of alignment.

You already see, perhaps, where this is going? It was not the first time that two angels of widely disparate ranks fell in love. It will certainly not be the last. But it is, in all the history of the White City, the most infamous.

Hadrimon was, at the time, a … Well, I think there are no equivalents in any military structure with which you’re familiar. The ranks of the angelic militias are varied, and the differences remarkably subtle. Let’s say that he was a field officer of some authority, in command of multiple flights of underlings, and that should suffice.

Her name—you knew there would be a “her,” of course—was Raciel. She was the field leader for one of the squadrons that fell under Hadrimon’s command. Had she been nearer his equal in rank and position, they might have found some legal means of legitimizing the love they felt for each other. Had
they been more widely separate, then at least the conflict of interest would not have been as great, and perhaps our leaders at the time would have felt less of a need to … To …

Ah, what use speculating? What was, was.

Their love could never be, and they both knew it. Again, they were hardly the first among angels to find themselves in such straits. The Library of the Argent Spire has multiple shelves devoted solely to the mythic poetry inspired by such hopeless romances, whether unrequited or shared. For other races, other cultures, the triumph of such a tale might involve the illicit lovers finding some means of thwarting convention, of allowing their passions to flower.

But we are angels. We are warriors. Mind, law,
discipline
 … these are our heroic ideals. For us, a soldier worthy of respect tends to his or her duties, obeys the strictures of the
Codex
. Emotion, satisfaction of one’s desires—these must come second.

Throughout our history, they always had. Not this time.

Most angels know this story; it’s one of our most popular cautionary tales. The general belief in the White City is that Raciel was weak, somehow lesser than those who faced such temptations before. Me? I’m not so certain; sometimes, I wonder if she might not have been among the strongest of us, to knowingly risk so very much …

Either way, it scarcely matters.

Raciel acknowledged her feelings to Hadrimon—and in the face of her admission, he could no longer deny his own. They arranged a later meeting, in which they might discuss their possible futures, any options that might allow them to be together. That their love might also, at that time, be consummated went unspoken, but I doubt that the thought had failed to occur to either of them.

Once the immediate encounter had passed, however, Hadrimon began to reconsider. Either, depending on whom
you ask, he rediscovered the courage of his convictions, or his courage
failed
. However one looks at it, Hadrimon pondered all the possibilities, everything that could go wrong, all that he would have to give up, whether he was prepared to violate the
Codex Bellum
for love.

I’m uncertain precisely how he phrased his report, but when Raciel arrived at their prearranged meeting place, she found a squad of soldiers waiting to detain her, to hold her until she could stand before a military tribunal for such gross violation of legal proprieties. Of Hadrimon, she found no trace. To my knowledge, the two of them never faced each other again.

Had it ended here, with Raciel suffering demotions in rank, reassignment to unpleasant duties, social stigma, then this tale would be a sad one still, but ultimately of little importance. Unfortunately, what happened was … not nearly so rational.

I remind you, again, that we were at the height of our war against Hell. Further, the Charred Council had only recently emerged as a power in the struggles across the Tree of Life, and the White City did not yet know whether or not they would prove to be an enemy. As such, military discipline—always of paramount importance among my people—was at its most fevered pitch. This was absolutely the worst possible time for any sort of breakdown in the chain of command or the social order, and the generals of Heaven determined to take advantage of the opportunity presented them.

They would make an example of Raciel, a chilling precedent that would be remembered through the millennia.

Standard disciplinary action would not suffice. Long-term imprisonment or physical mutilation would resonate, but it would also make her a burden on resources that could be better used elsewhere. Death? That might do, save that dying for a
cause in which one believes is the highest possible honor to many of my people. It might make her a rallying cry for others who harbored secret desires to challenge the stringent laws of the
Codex Bellum
. And besides, death was a threat with which every angel lived. The notion of losing oneself, of returning to the Well of Souls, was unpleasant but hardly terrifying.

I understand they even approached the Charred Council, to request that Raciel be banished to Oblivion, but the White City’s envoy was rebuffed. Raciel had committed no crime against the Balance or the Council itself, and they were unwilling—rightfully so, I should think—to serve as a tool of vengeance for others.

All of which, alas, left one option remaining. First, Raciel was stripped of some of her memories—not many, only those that involved the defenses and military tactics of the White City, so that her knowledge could not be used against us. So, too, was she robbed of the magics and powers that would otherwise have allowed her to locate or manipulate the passageways between worlds.

Then, with great ritual, in a ceremony observed by thousands, Raciel was exiled to Hell.

I know. Her crime hardly seems worthy of such a fate, does it? Yet that, I am forced to confess, was her sentence. A great portal was opened and Raciel was allowed to fall, fall until the very notions of distance and depth became meaningless. And there, in Hell, she would suffer whatever torments and tortures the demons chose to inflict, to say nothing of whatever vile transmutations the Pit itself might wreak upon her, until the day the infernal creatures finally tired of the game and killed her. A day, her judges knew, that would not come for a very, very long time.

Hadrimon abandoned his duties not long afterward and disappeared. I would like to think that if he had any notion of
what would be done to her, he would never have reported Raciel’s lapse in propriety. His later behavior certainly suggests a guilty conscience. Several times since then, he has briefly reappeared, engaged in some half-planned scheme directed against the leadership of Heaven, Hell, or both. At times, he has attempted to reignite the war between Above and Below—staging an attack of one upon the other with the aid of mercenary soldiers, committing sabotage and leaving evidence to implicate the enemy, that sort of thing. At other times, he’s made abortive efforts at raising a force of soldiers powerful enough to invade Hell itself. He’s never said as much—or if he has, I never heard about it—but I can’t imagine he thinks of it as anything else than a rescue mission.

The sad truth is, he’s something of a joke in the White City. His efforts are desperate, feeble, easily detected and thwarted. They’re almost the workings of a child, as though his regret and sorrow have overridden whatever strategic acumen he once possessed. As such, and because some of us still felt sorry for him, no concerted effort at locating and capturing him has ever been undertaken. We all assumed that he would eventually wear himself out and disappear, or would attempt something so foolish that he would be caught in the act—by Heaven if he were lucky, otherwise by Hell. Not an angel alive would ever have believed that he might become a real danger, especially after all this time.