Page 84 of When Monsters Fight
You see, the soul has its own voyage, and my soul…well, it wasn’t as new as I’d been led to believe, and when I was in that in-between state, not completely obliterated, but not grounded either, everything made sense. The knowledge of the cosmos was mine. But that time that felt like a blissful eternity ended too soon.
“Ah, there you are, little one. Open your eyes.” Lucifer’s voice coaxed me back to being.
I emerged from the endless light to find her looking down at me. Where was I? What had happened?
I’d died.
Shem too…
Where was Bastian? Gabriel? Where was?—
“Hush now. You’re safe. Everyone is safe.”
I sat up on a bed in a decadently decorated room, all cream and silver and filled with afternoon sunlight.
“Where am I?”
“Home.” Lucifer smiled.
She was no longer dressed in her battle clothes but was in a loose-fitting shirt and dark slacks. Her hair was braided, the tail dangling over her shoulder, and why was she looking at me with such wonder?
“Where is home…exactly?”
“Heaven, Rue. This is heaven.”
“I died.”
“Yes. Your mortal body is gone, and your soul was revealed in all its glory.”
“I’m confused. How am I here?”
“Because this is where you belong, Rue, just like me. You see, gods procreate by either sharing their divine essence with another god or by creating a being from their own essence. The god of this world did the latter. Twice. Once with me, and then again with you.”
“Wait…what?”
“Yes, Rue. God is our father, and you and I…we are sisters.”
This was insane.It was totally impossible, so why was there a calm inside me? A gentle acceptance as if…as if I’d known it all along. “I was mortal.”
“Your test was mortality. Your test was fixing that particular world, just as mine was managing Gehenna. Our father loves tests just as much as he loves creating beings from the ether that connect us all. We are both here now because our tests are complete. He promised me ascension, and I have it, but I believe he sent you into the world blind.”
“Yes, I…I don’t remember him. I don’t remember my creation. But the Cherub we met a while back said I was created specifically to house a piece of Shem’s soul.”
“Your mortal body was, yes,” Lucifer said.
An awful thought occurred to me. “Wait, what about Shem? Was he…Is he our brother?”
Her eyes twinkled. “No, Rue. Shem was created by our father and Thanatos in a collaborative effort. He was the anchor to the Morningstar relic which housed a piece of my soul. You see, you and I have both been fractured. You on earth and me in Gehenna. I’m whole now, and so are you. When Soul Reaper ended your body, the fragment of your soul that had been on the mortal realm reunited with the divine aspect of you. You know this, you feel it. But it will take time for it all to assimilate.”
She was right. I did feel it. I felt connected in a way I’d only ever felt with the watchers. “The Dominion?”
Her mouth thinned. “Gone. Their essence dissimilated and thrown back into the ether. They were created without form. Never blessed with the ability to create their own physical bodies. Their power lay only in their control overthe scribes and the reputation they built here before the fall.”
“And Michael? He tried to fight them in the end.”
“Yes, he did. We spoke and he realized his mistake. Maybe I would have forgiven him, but he was tainted by ambition and greed, and I fear in time he would have made the same mistake again. Some souls crave power, and Michael is one of them. I could not suffer him to live. He was also dissimilated.”
Michael had made his choices and his end was fitting. But the others? “What about Shem, Gabriel, and Bastian? What about the watchers, and Bee? Are they okay?”
