A Heart's Crucible

“The Seal.”

Unbalanced Soul’s piercing cry reached Ahriman’s wing-feast preoccupied mind.

The Dark Lord pivoted as his ghoul raised Slugger into the pitch position. He realised Mount Kaf groaned as boulders prised open. In his initial selfish presumption, Ahriman hoped even a rip at a Peri wing somehow prised a crack in the seal, restricting his ambitions.

Wings were off the menu as the great closure sundered open as Mount Kaf belched.

He scowled as the flaxen Peri stepped aside. An oversized teardrop split the seal.

“Oh, fack, not you,” Ahriman said as he recognised the sword of the eternal spirit and the breastplate of righteousness as the gap widened. The gap showed the seven seraphim and The Host from on high!

The seal loomed a trap, not an exit.

“Form the line.”

He expected his ghouls to obey.

Dying Ember, without his sword, rushed ahead. The idiot charged at the angel Raguel.

Ghouls remember old scores. The angel severed his ear in the ages past battle of the heavens. Now a blue finger poised to burn inside an angel’s ear.

“Damn, Thirsty Sea,” snarled the Dark Lord because the git lacked no retention issues with his nemesis, Raphael.

“Oy you, po-faced boy of heaven,” the ghoul said, raising his scythe and charging at golden locks and ochre eyes.

“ My sickle has a date to hook and rip your tongue.”

Ahriman knew Crumbling Dust as an undisciplined ghoul. But a rabble of a front line made his evil team a personal disgrace as the buffoon ignored holding the line. He delivered the rudest gestures his dirty fingers knew as he launched a headlong bolt at Jeremiel.

“Thank Satan,” huffed Ahriman as Unbalanced Soul held his ground, shielding his master, allowing the Dark Lord to flail his chains with devastating effect. He sliced the edges off the guardians of Heaven’s wings, scattering feathers into the nothing.

He spied Remiel, guarding God, repeating, ‘holy, holy, holy’ above the din of battle. The angel’s voice carried above the sparring of weapons and the grunts of cheek-to-jowl combat. In the rhythm of war, he reminded himself to let Unbalanced Soul get his eye for an eye.

The lead seraphim, Michael, Zerachiel and Gabriel, confronted the Dark Lord and his one-eyed ghoul. Ahriman grew in hubristic confidence as a team of two forced the angelic spearhead into a retreat. Unbalanced Soul reacted as the premium foil. Selfless in the face of overwhelming odds. Pure ghoul grit kept defying frickin Heaven. Ahriman, gathering his first peek of life beyond Mount Kaf, even a void of nothing, roused himself to new heights. His chains were manic in their maligned barbed wallop. So upbeat, he self-predicted; even God was going down today. Why settle for the earth when he could also rule paradise? Blah, to Hell, Satan could keep the inferno; by reputation, the netherworld stank!

∗ ∗ ∗

Joq scooted back behind Remiel and God. She hoped this spot provided the safest place in the universe as the Lord of Hosts marshalled and urged his seasoned stellar seraphim in a heinous battle. She craned to view any comrades through the fissured seal. Zel lay inert on the slab. Joq’s shoulders slumped as she regretted being too late!

Joq scanned the surreal battlefield through moist eyes. She recalled the seraphim before departing Heaven, saying ‘Mount Kaf’ and ‘the nothing.’ The Mount mingled the granite of Sinai and the mystic of Ararat. The nothing she decided was a strange term. There is always something. Yet naught to relieve dazzled eyes. The empty expanse blazed a blinding light — an intense, headache-inducing silvery overhead met an endless plain of crusted white underfoot. The nothing reminded Joq of the salt flats cresting the Andes, a lifeless mirror to the azure.

She steadied her stance as the phalanx of the Host reformed and held their line. A slugging mace slammed plate after plate as only a ghoul could, unceasing. The one-eyed fiend gathered strength each time he delivered a blow.

The demon Lord behind him descended to disgraceful behaviour, name-calling the angels, “prissy sky high castrato.”

Joq spied Dying Ember, engaging Raguel one on one. The ghoul’s finger seared into an angelic lobe. She covered her mouth as stocky seraphim hands circled the fiend’s throat and throttled the soul out of a monster.

The death received a spray of Ahriman’s derision.

“Useless prick entering a battle minus his sword.”

Her tension for the outcome eased as Raguel reinforced the vanguard. Though, the one they called Unbalanced Soul, in the clash of weapons and names, pummelled breastplates regardless of how many confronted.

She rocked as the half-tongued ghoul provoked Raphael into a duel. Joq winced; single combat shaped nasty. The parched ghoul wielded his trident scythe high for a head hit. He aimed low to slash tendons and mid-height to release intestines. Joq realised her body sways matched the defensive angel. The ghoul whipped his net from his shoulder. She covered her eyes as he entangled the blonde seraphim’s non-sword arm by skill or a fluke. The ghoul victory bayed rabid as a wolf. But Joq peeked as he bellowed pig-gutted because Raphael’s sword of piety sliced the ghoul’s kidney and liver. An agonising suspended death and a one-way ticket to Satan.

Joq cheered from the sideline as Raphael merged into the frontline phalanx. She thought Unbalanced Soul showed stellar courage for a rouge. His mace proved insurmountable today as he pocked seraphim armour with dents. His Slugger knew no mercy. A mace perfecting the bash. And the Kazakh Peri watched the bash dominate in a regular ruckus and din of weapons clashing.

Joq recalled how dogs fought as she stared at a melee, Crumbling Dust versus Jeremiel.

She crossed her fingers and her toes to support the fatherly angel. Open-mouthed, she flinched as a cudgel and sword engaged in gladiatorial hostilities. She recalled the terrible Roman Colosseum. Both the ghoul and angel punched faces and kicked shins.

Joq overheard Jeremiel berate his foe.

“You grave-robbing ghoul. Stealing Alexander the Great’s golden greaves.”

She discerned an unholy itch struck the fiend at the wrong moment. The ghoul’s neck moulted in the heat of battle. She witnessed the desiccated fiend lose concentration in a micro- as his raised fingers scratched his neck.

“Whoops!” said Joq.

“He should have concentrated on his groin.”

Jeremiel’s sword hacked the ghoul’s crotch. Straight away, the seraphim poured the powder of the martyred saints into the gash. As the ghoul convulsed and screamed, Joq covered her ears. Her eyes tracked his writhed and convulsed collapse.

She panted, and her bosom heaved as Jeremiel amalgamated into the vanguard.

Unbalanced Soul, she decided, emerged heroic on the wrong side. She observed his gritted teeth. She pondered-war may be a commander’s numbers game, but the memorable battlefield slugfests are veteran-to-veteran. The one-eyed ghoul’s mettle soared into her mind as legendary. Damn! Ahriman sniped with precision. He cut through the seraphim’s skin of faith, which seeped out a rainbow glow. Joq recoiled at the leaking spirit of the divine.

Jumping around, she cracked the caked salt pans beneath her feet. Six versus two became seven as Remiel joined the violent throe. Yet, she noted, the greater the imbalance, the more the unbalanced Ghoul escalated into berserk. First, his Slugger rampaged and clobbered. And after, Slugger slugged. Then, with a herculean strike, the one-eyed ghoul shattered six fatigued swords. Meanwhile, Ahriman aimed his sextet of chains at a cunning ankle low and bowled most of the seraphim into a confused, rattled rabble.

“Oh, Shrikes!”

Joq stamped her foot; evil secured the upper hand.

Two-on-one, she spied; the Dark Lord sparkled at these odds. They forced Remiel to hold his ground.

Joq eyeballed God! Her mind blanked on why he held in reserve vis-à-vis versus evil.

Fingers to her mouth, she didn’t understand why good faced such a tough time versus wickedness.

She steadied because Remiel displayed endless patience face to face with the rotten. Honed, she heard the other angel joke before the portal by his interminable chant of ‘holy, holy, holy.’ She watched him use a sword, parry, feint and lunge in rhythm. The ghoul annoyed her, so Joq kicked the caked salt as he kept his attack simple. He bashed until a change of tactic. He swung low to slug the seraphim’s kneecap to crash him into the salt flat. But his wide-step action caused one of Ahriman’s chains to rip out the ghoul’s eye.

Joq saw the red orb dangled in a mangle.

She heard the Dark Lord rage.

“Fack!”

Not at Unbalanced Soul’s plight. Instead, Remiel’s strike under the ghoul’s armpit bled into his chest.

She saw Ahriman writhing in pain as he hit the salted ground, seeping greenish blood.

Pity stirred her heart as Unbalanced Soul floundered, flailing his mace.

Joq observed Remiel sidestep the ghoul and aim at the Dark Lord’s eyes to end his reign of sin. She covered her heart as the most faithful servitor, hearing his Lord’s death cry, thrust himself between the sword of justness and Ahriman’s unjust chest. Joq wished his soul peace in the pit, a hell-hound-bound warrior for the worst of causes.

After she saw Remiel wrench his sword from Unbalanced Soul’s ribs, delaying a renewed assault on the wounded demon Lord as he crawled into Mount Kaf.

∗ ∗ ∗

From a far chamber peering out, Ahriman expected the Lord of Hosts to release the Peri and reseal him. In time he could re-plan and renew evil!

He banged his head on the wall as Remiel’s sword shone in the chamber near the sacrifice slab. Behind him, the seraphim holding replacement swords flew and clanked cages open alongside the pesky buttered-hair Peri. Presumably, God lurked farther back, opening a portal for the sprites to return to earth.

Peri swooped in V formations out of Mount Kaf — without a thank you or by-your-leave. Ahriman flared his nostrils, endorsing this total ingratitude, the comprehensive ungratefulness. He sneered and believed a selfish world still called!

Remiel, though, poked around the edges of the vast central chamber.

Bummer, from Ahriman, clutching his slow, bleeding chest, the angels hunted him.

He recomposed.

No frickin’ problem, plan B — under his talons, fettered, lay the Peri in the pink sari.