M Horn of Plenty

Arthur Morgan

Pass Into Myth
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Spirits of Vengeance
One might imagine there’d be a story to how the archangel Gabriel ends up in a universe utterly divorced from his own.

And they’d be right.

It’s only been seven days, maybe a little more than that (because who’s keeping track?) and heaven is already falling apart. So, here’s the deal, the rundown, the no nonsense tl;dr, the little unhappy accident that has left everything screwed, blued, and tattooed.

Man is created. He’s lonely. Woman is created, the very first... but apparently she’s not any good so Man requests a new one with a more obliging attitude. Eve walks onto the scene in her birthday suit. Lucifer, who hates everyone pretty much equally except for maybe Michael, smoozes the brand new and barely-a-day-old broad into eating this piece of fruit, an apple or a fig or something else, who gives a fig about it, and things go practically fucktangular before you can say “Who thought putting that tree in there was a good idea, anyway?”

Michael, who doesn’t really like the man or woman very much but is kind of a terrible suck up when it comes to His projects, takes issue with this. Obviously. Then a few particularly trigger happy garrisons follow suit. Then Lucifer, the frickin’ Morningstar, suddenly has an army. Not a big one, but enough to stir up trouble. Just, out of nowhere— poof! Looks like heaven is now engaged in a pretty brutal civil war! And suddenly brothers are tearing into brothers, feathers and iridescent grace paint the cosmos in ugly streaks, and the first thunderstorm ever in all of existence rocks through Eden like a hurricane.

Unfortunately, one angel has been tasked with mustering together a band of cherubs, all of them scattered to the winds by the first dry cracks of lightning that signal the start of a holy war. As one of the more powerful angels in heaven, it’s up to him to set an example for them, train them in the ways of combat. Michael and Raphael are counting on him to get this band of fledglings up to snuff so they can enter into some serious incorporeal fisticuffs.

Naturally, this angel decides to make a game of it by engaging the frightened angels in a fight to the death— one that involves hurling fruit at each other, and no actual death or injury whatsoever. He’s also just been hit square in the chest.

“Ack, you got me,” he breathes, staggering back. A huge red stain blots his shirt where a thrown fig has struck.

The angel falls over, still gurgling and gasping. A perfect death rattle. He hits the grass with a thump.

Raising one arm, he reaches toward the cherub that had dealt the killing blow. The other arm drapes dramatically across his brow— like something out of a tragic painting.

“Come.... closer...”

The cherub shuffles forward a step, wary.

“Closer.”

Another shuffle.

The older angel huffs with vehemence. “Is it just me or are you getting further away? Closer, kid!”

The cherub scrambles to obey, very nearly trodding all over the angel’s much larger, six wings.

“No, no, too close— take a step back. Okay, that’s good, you’re good. Stay there. You hear me? You hear the sound of my voice? Okay kiddo, listen well, since I’m dying and all. Tell— tell Lucifer.... tell him... it was me who did it. Don’t tell him what I did. That’s the fun part, the most important bit. He’ll spend the rest of eternity trying to figure out what I did, so don’t tell him anything else. Okay, now...”

Rolling his eyes back in his head, the angel groans and flops backward, gazing forlornly at the heavens. A chorus of giggling comes from the cherubs, but he isn’t listening to them— too caught up in his performance, really.

Of course, it isn’t long before someone turns up to spoil his fun, a mighty gust rushing through the grass blades as another six-winged figure lands nearby.

Panicking a bit, but committed to his part, the angel tries to hurry up. “Ack, I am slain! Avenge me, young ones... and don’t forget to tell Lucy what I said, ‘kay—“

GABRIEL, the archangel Raphael interrupts thunderously, a tone of voice that sends the young soldiers scattering to all different corners of heaven like a scared flock of birds. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

The archangel Gabriel blinks up at Raphael from his place on the ground. He feigns nonchalance. “Oh, sup Raph.”

YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE TRAINING A GARRISON. NOT CAVORTING ABOUT IN SOME GARDEN WHILE THE REST OF US PREPARE FOR WAR.

“Yeah, uh-huh. Say, could you maybe use your inside voice?” Gabriel asks, gesturing loosely to his ears. “The holy word hurts mine ears, brudda.”

Raphael deflates a tad, but obliges. “I’ll not ask again, Gabriel. What have you been doing?”

“Uhh...” the archangel picks thoughtfully at the front of his terribly stained robe. “I’d call this training. Yeah, definitely. Simulated combat.”

He receives a flat look for this bold-faced lie. “Combat? I didn’t see a single blade.”

Gabriel heaves a heavy sigh. “You’re the only real bitch in this house I can trust, Raph. Lemme tell you a secret: I wasn’t interested in actually hurting anyone. Unlike some people.”

Now, here’s one thing you’ve absolutely gotta know about angels before things continue any further; they’re always talking to each other. It’s kinda hard not to, when you’re a screaming ball of celestial intent the size of planet fuckin’ Jupiter hurtling through several dimensions at once. Thoughts are just another type of energy, really, and the host isn’t shy about… mingling their energies together.

It’s not as gross as it sounds. Honest.

So, things change very abruptly when two archangels decide to speak privately. For one, the voices of the rest of the heavenly host are soundly cut off in an instant, the air growing heavier with the sheer divine might the two beings are exerting. They’re about to settle this brother to brother, mano-a-mano, and it’s scary as hell for everyone involved.

(AH FUCK, Balthazar mourns to Castiel, the both of them hidden from sight and hovering a small distance away. JUST WHEN IT WAS GETTING GOOD, TOO.

I CANNOT SEE HOW THIS COULD REASONABLY BE DEFINED AS ‘GOOD’ IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, BALTHAZAR.

YOU’RE NO FUN.
)

The archangel Raphael fixes Gabriel with a stern look, dropping all pretenses. Gabriel’s the youngest of the original four brothers, but that doesn’t mean the Healer has to cut him any slack. “Quit being a dumbass, Gabriel. You do know that this is what our father intended, don’t you? You can’t talk like… like...”

“Like Lucifer?” Gabriel snorts, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, okay. I’m not totally suicidal, you know. I’m not about to invite Michael’s holy wrath upon me.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Gabriel wipes a hand over his face, clearly annoyed, but when it comes away he’s grinning. “Dear Saint Michael the Archangel, please don’t set fire to my luscious backside, amen. Listen, Raph. Listen. You can’t honestly believe that this is how things are supposed to go down. You just can’t.”

Raphael takes in the pleading look Gabe is giving him with an outwardly dispassionate air, but the other archangel sees his grace shiver uncomfortably. “It isn’t our place to question, Gabriel.”

“You don’t think I know that? I’m just saying I don’t want any part of it.”

Raphael sighs.

“Gabriel, you know that I love you dearly. Just as much as I still love Lucifer, and Michael, and all our brothers. But it would be… kinder, in a way, for us to assist Michael in putting Lucifer and his brood down. We can’t allow this blasphemous trend to continue.”

It’s so hard to look Raphael in the eye, because Gabriel knows that he 100% believes in what he’s saying, that it’s the right thing to do to cast part of their own family into the pit. He doesn’t want to see that earnest light shining there, nor the gaze brimming with love. He just can’t take it.

So, Gabriel stands, shaking out his golden wings that are a bit dusty from disuse, all six of them stretching out to the length of a football field. Of course, this is only his smaller, more convenient form. Gabriel’s true form is much larger, a churning conflagration of vibrant phoenix-fire with many mouths and many blinking eyes, but he likes to keep that part of himself tucked away, no matter how much keeping it incorporeal chafes and itches at him.

Unsurprisingly, the whole divine abomination look tends to scare people off. Gabriel refuses to mess up (again) by searing someone’s eyeballs out of their sockets (for the third time, whoops), thank you very much.

“Where are you going? Going to visit the pagans again?” Raphael demands, his own wings beginning to fan out like a peacock’s, feathers a vibrant jewel green with a softer grey misting through the down. His wings are a mite plainer than Gabriel’s rippling gold, but to tell you the truth, Gabriel’s always found them insufferably pretty. Like a rainforest clouded over with fog, or something else stupidly poetic like that.

“I’m just gonna stretch my wings for a spell.” Gabriel looks out from the plane of heaven they’re standing on, spying the soft ringlets of clouds drifting in the distance. It’s beautiful.

He smiles sardonically to himself, though it feels more like a cringe.

The muscles of his wings twitch, feathers shimmering like a sea of medallions, and then he’s beating them, flouncing up into the air on a convenient breeze. He laughs, as he always does, and throws back a hearty “Don’t wait up, ma!”

“You can’t run from this, Gabriel!” Raphael’s voice carries after him, piercing shrilly through the wind roaring in his ears. “Stop acting like a child!”

Joke’s on you, Gabriel thinks, winging through the skies with an ease that belies many, many unsupervised flights. No one can make me do anything.

In the end, Gabriel runs away. Or, that’s the plan, anyway.

Instead, he’s just taken flight from heaven, headed on a one way trip to Earth to go party with some Nordic gods for half a millennia, and promptly slams into a blip in the cosmic fabric of the universe. Which really sucks, number one, because his incorporeal form is damaged in a distinctly corporeal way, severing his wings from his body in a jagged, uneven slice. Number two, this blip then turns into a kind of suction-y vacuum, yanking him through with hardly a how d’you do.

Yeah. It’s been a shit day.
 
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