The imperial gates of Acheron swung open, and the processional which went before great Morningstar marched, singing, out into the waves; and the waters grew still as crystal beneath their angelic footsteps.
Great Morningstar himself, taller than the tallest church steeple, heralded by the pallid light which shone and darted from his brow, stepped over the threshold, and paused, one foot upon the iron steps of Acheron, one foot on the water.
His proud eyes viewed at once the whole of Earth, his promised kingdom, for the eyes of angels do not fail with distance, and are not deceived by the surfaces of things. He saw the whole business of mankind and all their works; and his mind, wiser and swifter than any mortal mind, instantly apprehended all the sins and woes of all humanity. And now his lip curled in disdain.
The seraphim to his left were crowned in black Hell-fire, and wore vestments red as blood; the seraphim to his right wore crowns like the aurorae that appear over arctic snows, and their vestments were pale as corpses. Seven candlesticks of gold went before him, issuing smoke without light, held in the hands of the seven Virtues which were his handmaidens: Inhumanity, Despair, Infidelity, Madness, Blindness, Injustice, and Cowardice. And behind him came the great Archangel Mulciber, Prince of the Abyss, carrying the scroll wherein the doom of all the world was written; and the scroll was sealed with seven seals.
Morningstar halted in his processional, and spoke to Mulciber, saying, “My house has not yet been prepared to receive me, for, behold, the vermin mankind still infests this green Earth. You have not yet opened the Seal of Doom, nor let free the utter destruction contained therein to cleanse this, my world, of that filth which the Thunderer dared to set before me in priority. Even now the fallen creatures conspire to direct a weapon against me; yet still they live. Where, in this, is wisdom?”
Mulciber bowed low, saying, “Glory, glory, glory to you in the highest! Majesty, your own command allowed that those who worship you, and committed crimes in your name, would be permitted to live as slaves, forever condemned to die and deserving of death, yet forever spared. We cannot unleash undiscriminate devastations to rule, with horror, the Earth, till your loyal worshippers have been winnowed out from the body of mankind; to do otherwise would be to put a falsehood into the mouth of Morningstar, our brightest, and that cannot be.”
Morningstar raised his head to gaze upon the darkened clouds and darkened sky. “Behold, their weapon ignites. Glory, and empire, hesitate. How shall we sponge away this blot upon our honor? For we have, with conquering footstep, set forth to receive the homage of the Earth, and yet we have trodden on a scorpion.”
Mulciber spoke: “What are the weapons of creatures such as they to spirits such as we? No flame of man’s making can hinder pure and higher entities; only the sun can drive us back, and we have overcome and banished him. Mere men, I deem, cannot draw down the sun at their command from heaven!”
Morningstar said, “Yet so they have done. Behold.”
A white light appeared above their heads, and in the midst of that light, Hyperion, crowned in glory, whipped his chariot of fire down upon Acheron, and raised his bow of light.
Morningstar stepped forth, swelling in an instant to a stature overtopping his own towers, and his wings, like winter storm clouds, spread hugely across the sky. Those Angels of Acheron who fled into his shadow were spared; those who did not were withered like autumn leaves in a fire.
Acheron was destroyed; the flames cast fragments of the broken towers, hugely crumbling, cloaked with smoke, into the steaming sea and up on high into the bright, burning air.
Morningstar strode gigantically up into the sky, slaying the steeds of the sun-chariot with the first sweep of his scepter. Hyperion, his wings of gold fanning out to grip the air, toppled from the wreckage to the chariot, drawing his great sword Adustus as he fell.
The second blow from the scepter of Morningstar broke the sword in fragments, shattered Hyperion’s golden breastplate, and struck the Sun-God to the heart.
In the midst of the explosion, stepping forth from the smolder and cloud-mass of which he seemed a part, rose a vast figure of perfect angelic beauty, his dark visage stern and contemptuous beneath the single pale light which burned like a third eye upon his coronet, his black wings like smoke spreading the cloud far out across the heavens. And in those arms was the dead body of a golden angel, withered laurel leaves dropping from his golden head, broken sword and snapped bow dropping from his relaxed fingers.
As the after light of the explosion faded from the sky, Morningstar, with a contemptuous thrust of his arm, dropped the corpse into the sea, where it floated, face downward, sodden wings collapsed crookedly upon the waves like two islands.
Morningstar strode across the surface of the sea, and put one foot upon the deck of the aircraft carrier. Such was his size that his heel and toe covered the forward part of the deck from port to starboard; and the pressure of his step overcame the power of the engines, so that the laboring propellers churned the sea without effect.
The pale light from the supreme angel’s brow gathered itself into a beam and glanced down at the deck, as Morningstar looked down. Lemuel yanked the cover off his Chalice and spilled the living light into the air all around him, so that, while Pendrake, Raven, Galen, and the others were sickened, robbed of all strength and beaten prone by that light, they were not instantly slain. They lay on their faces, shivering, limbs cold.
Morningstar raised his great scepter, and the muscles of his upraised arm were like the pillars that hold up the world. The ship was in the shadow of his arm, and of his scepter.
Snow began to drift gently down from the clouds that had gathered in the shadow of his measureless, vast wings.
Only Prometheus was on his feet, and even his size was nothing compared to Morningstar’s; he was as a tall pine tree growing the shadow of a vast mountain-glacier. But Prometheus was not even looking upward; he had taken the engine out of the wreckage of a helicopter, and was holding it in one hand, taking it apart with the other, fascinated.
Raven was looking at where his wife’s face was pressed into the deck not far from his own. There were tears in her eyes; she was frightened. Through blue and shivering lips, she whispered feebly, “Raven! Do something! I’m scared!”
Raven feebly twitched and put his hands under him. Morningstar’s perfect and beautiful voice floated down from heaven. “Prometheus Loki. Bow down to me, trickster, and yield me homage, and, even now, I will spare the filthy race you have created. Bow! Or I send the tidal wave to swallow the cities of mankind, one for each minute you resist.” He opened and closed his wings, and great waves gathered on the far horizons and fled away across the sea.
Prometheus looked up, as if puzzled. “Pay honor to you, eldest brother? How have you earned it? What have you invented?”
“The great city of New York has been overwhelmed and inundated. Yield to me. Am I not your elder?”
Raven, warm sparks crawling over his trembling limbs, and leaning heavily upon the lightning bolt he held like a crutch, had found, from somewhere, a superhuman strength to rise again to his feet.
Raven could not meet the gaze of the Emperor of Night, but looked up at his chin, and shouted, “Morningstar! Stop! Or we destroy you now!”
Morningstar eye’s narrowed in withering contempt. “Prometheus Loki! Order the things you have made of dirt to bow to me, and I will, perhaps, entertain to restore the Sun whom I have slain.”
Prometheus said, “Should you receive bows from my mankind? Well, that’s for them to say. They are not mine to give away.”
Raven said, “Galen, blow horn. All heaven fall! Fall down and crush this evil angel!”
Morningstar, perhaps irked by the whining noise of the carrier’s engines, glanced toward the stern, and his cold glance froze the rear third of the ship into a wide iceberg. “Prometheus Loki, silence your crawling vermin. Do they not know their little place in the vastness of the universe? Dare they attempt deception to a mind superior without measure to their own? For I can see into their very hearts, and I know that he who holds the horn has no will to wind it.”
Azrael Merlin, his face darkened with effort, his eyes bright with rage and fear, had struggled up to his knees, his breath laboring. “Great Morningstar, paramount and without peer among the hosts of angelic powers, though fallen; hail and greetings, and glory, glory, glory unto thee, wonder of heaven! Have I your leave to address you, unworthy though I am?” And with unsteady fingers, he picked up the unicorn horn out of Galen’s hand and pointed it like a weapon at the mountainous vast figure of Morningstar, who loomed, mace still upraised, across the whole heavens overhead.
The words of the dark archangel, luminous, perfect, filled the night. “Merlin Azrael Waylock, it was your hand and with that horn which first gave me the passions and ambitions of mankind, to which all other angels, save me alone, are ignorant, frozen in their pale duties, unambitious, content. This has pleased me, you may speak; but know first that all you intend to say I see within your heart. Shall you tell me that Acheron behind me is destroyed, and that I cannot return to the dream-world, except through Everness? Shall you tell me that you will have the authority to embody me as you have had to Oberon, should I so put myself beneath your authority and pass back through your Everness gate? Your schemes are nothing to me, wizard, for I foresaw all your treasons when first we met before the cadaver of the unicorn; I knew them even before you had conceived them. My herald, Koschei Anubis Cerebus, the littlest of all my servants, already has raised my colors above Everness, and received the fealty of the lares, genus loci, and guardian angels loyal, once to you, now to me. Prometheus did not give your race wit enough even to remember an enemy you saw within your wards; you fled here and left him there. Fool. Your house is mine; your magic has failed. Now speak. What will you say to me, Merlin Azrael Waylock? Will you, too, threaten to blow the horn? I see in your heart that you would rather die than give victory, and this world, to Oberon. I await. Have you nothing, after all, to say?”
Azrael Merlin slumped forward, beaten down by the contempt of the angel’s gaze; and he knelt, leaning heavily upon the deck.
Raven, breathing in strained gasps, said, “Merlin! Apollo, he said magic not save us—only courage.”
Azrael Merlin, his strength failing, rolled the horn across the deck with trembling fingers. “Take it! You have endured the horror of Acheron. Your courage is greater than any of ours.”
The horn rolled into Lemuel’s grasp. He put his other hand on the Chalice, leaning heavily upon it; and when the Chalice began to float upward, beating against the tide of hideous pale light radiating from Morningstar’s disdain, Lemuel was raised to his knees.
“Blow!” snarled Azrael Merlin. “Blow your precious paradise to come and blow me back to hell!”
Lemuel raised the horn to his lips.
At the mere touch of his lips, the clouds above parted, and the constellations were gathering together. A shining city, gleaming like a star, with silvered domes and towers of sheer crystal, silent as a ghost, beautiful as a gem, began to descend.
Lemuel drew in his breath.
“Stop,” said Morningstar, “I concede. Well done, Prometheus Loki; your tricks have prevailed once more. I shall withdraw if your creature blows not that horn, and wait again in darkness for an aeon. Time is nothing to me; the Guardians of Everness, in generations to come, shall once more forget their charge. Sloth and idleness shall undermine your walls and grant me victory. A century of years or a millennium; it is all one, to me.”
Prometheus had just taken apart the ignition system of the helicopter, and was staring in fascination at the distributor cap. Without looking up, he muttered, “Certainly, that’s as you wish, eldest brother. But none of this is my work.”
Morningstar removed his foot from the carrier and stepped back onto the surface of the sea, which turned to ice in his shadow. And he lowered his great scepter.
Pendrake, leaning on the magic sword, face red with effort, heaved himself slowly upright. “That’s not enough, Morningstar! You have not yet heard our demands; we have not yet accepted your surrender!”
Wendy, stilled pinned to the ground by the weight and horror of the dark angelic gaze, said in a worried tone, “Daddy? Daddy! What are you doing?! Why don’t you let the nice angel go away now!”
Azrael Merlin had collapsed back to the deck. He hissed, “My Liege! Do not tamper with such powers! Do not tempt such a miracle as this our escape!”
Pendrake barked, “Now, Lemuel! Blow the horn. This is a matter of principle, and it is better that the world be destroyed than that we compromise one inch!”
Galen, face down on the deck, said weakly, “Please, Mr. Pendrake, can’t we just live and go home?”
Morningstar turned the pressure of his terrible gaze upon Pendrake, who raised the sword as if to parry a blow. Pendrake staggered but did not fall. Morningstar spoke in a mild and lovely voice: “Who are you, vermin, to make demands of one such as I am?”
Pendrake was able to look him in the eyes unflinchingly. “I am a free man. I bow to no one. And we will blow the horn unless you agree to return control of Everness to the Waylocks; agree to restore the sun which you have extinguished; to recall all tidal waves presently set in motion; to restore Venus to its proper orbit; and undo any other damage in the sky. Or does your angelic intelligence regard my demands as unjust?”
Morningstar gazed down. “I see in your heart that you put aside all temptation to ask for more, demanding only what is just and fair. So be it: I agree. I will, if it please me, wait till you are passed away, little bee, before I raise again my hand to pluck the honeycomb of this world. But you have wished your worse curse alive again: for only if you restore the tyrant Oberon to his power, can he use the Cauldron of Life to coax the soul of the Sun to flame again. I pray he will destroy you, filth, as you deserve. Enough! I am departed.”
And Morningstar turned, his great black wings folding over his shoulder like thunderheads, and he strode away into the airs and disappeared, passing over the waves to the East faster than the eyes of men could trace.